Pitman: paid $190,000 a year to throw baseless insults

Last week a paid public servant spoke untruths, but instead of being exposed by the media, he was aided by our taxpayer-funded public broadcast network. Andy Pitman spoke about the socio-economic position of a group he avoids, and let down UNSW, abused the title “Professor”, and misled the public.

The journalists allowed the baseless smears to be broadcast without question, not just once, but twice.

“My personal view is that climate scientists are losing the fight with climate sceptics. That the sceptics are so well funded, so well organized, have nothing else to do, they kind of don’t have day jobs, they can put all of their efforts into misinforming and miscommunicating climate science to the public, whereas the climate scientists have day jobs and this isn’t one of them. All of the efforts you do in an IPCC report is done out of hours, voluntarily, for no funding and no pay, whereas the sceptics are being funded to put out full scale misinformation campaigns…”

Let’s correct the six seven-delusion paragraph

1. Skeptics are well funded?

The misinformation helps to sell out the nation that supports them, to a corrupt foreign committee whose recommendations will mainly end up profiting large financial houses.

Let’s put a perspective on just how spectacularly wrong these claims on ABC radio are. ExxonMobil paid all of $23 million to skeptics worldwide in total, over ten years. In the same period, the US government alone was spending around $2 billion a year on climate scientists. And if you include other climate industry players, from 1989-2009, the total funding is $79 billion dollars. Hence believers of the big-scare could dip into a pot that was at least 3,500 times as large as anything the skeptics of the same scare could draw from. (All this info comes from myClimate Money paper).

If there was any equivalent funding for skeptics, Greenpeace would have found that paper trail and the scare-friendly press would have told you all about it. Big-Oil could hardly hide $79 billion now could they?

Andy Pitman earns far more from his beliefs than this skeptical advocate and infinitely more than most skeptics (who earn nothing) while he postulates on things he has done no research on and misleads the public. (Take me to court Andy. I don’t mind discovery of documents, but I don’t pander to bullies’ requests in public.) Most skeptical scientists are those no longer in the pay of government or other alarmist organizations, free to speak up without losing their jobs. They are mainly retired.

In reality it can cost money to be an active skeptic. To print out handouts, to organize speeches at local community halls, to do mail outs to our representatives, or to pay for transcripts of interviews that misrepresent the science. It says a lot that there are so many people willing to put themselves out, money and time-wise, in order to save us from the scare with no evidence.

Pitman has received over $6 million in grants– obviously not paid to him personally, but paid into accounts he controls–for research he directs. Presumably he also earns at least the base salary of a UNSW Professor, I gather, $190,000 a year.For a science PhD that’s not bad, especially if you throw in multiple overseas trips with all expenses paid, and the odd-rock-star-radio interview with no hard questions. It’s a wicket worth defending.

2. Skeptics are “well” organized?

Organized how exactly? With no PR department, no union, no association, no office, no UN agency, usually no budget, and … though you can see how we fund national multi-million dollar televised Ad campaigns like “Think Climate, Think Fraud”, oh that’s right … that was Kevin Rudd: “Think Climate, Think Change” (give us your money). That cost Australian taxpayers $13.9 million dollars.

Pitman cries poor while his scare campaign team includes the major western governments, the UN, the banks, big oil (they always funded alarmism more, and now don’t fund skeptics), the green movement, the alternative energy suppliers, the reinsurance industry, and many businesses. About all the skeptics have is donors on blogs and a few dedicated organizations of like minded people, such as the indefatigable Heartland (which is in turn funded mostly by private donations, with no more than 5% from any single corporation). Skeptics are tiny voices against vast machines.

Pitman wouldn’t recognize a genuine grassroots movement if it mowed him down.

4. “Explaining science is not my job”.

According to the UNSW Guidelines, it is. It’s what Professors are paid to do: to foster leadership and excellence in their academic area within the university and the community. As it happens, over the last 18 months, I’ve asked Pitman in writing to publicly name any misleading points from the Skeptics Handbook. He has refused.

5. I, Andy Pitman, volunteer to help the IPCC

As Andrew Bolt so aptly pointed out, Andy Pitman’s grants list includes around $60,000 in funding “for costs incurred as lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”.

That’s not most people’s idea of volunteer work.

6. Skeptics don’t have day jobs

Pitman, contradicting himself suddenly, claims many “fully funded” climate skeptics don’t have day jobs, and for once he’s half-right, but scores an own goal by using the truth. Most active skeptics don’t have day jobs, precisely because there aren’t any paid climate skeptic positions to have. Many skeptics are retired, because no one else has time to audit the IPCC “for fun”.

Many skeptics are retired, because no one else has time to audit the IPCC “for fun”.

As far as I know (correct me if I’m wrong), total ARC grants specifically available for research aiming to disprove the theory of AGW in 2010 are exactly $0.00, as has been the case since time began. (That’s another scandal, for another day.)

Who should be protecting Australia from paying reparations based on bogus science? When the bogus science is climate science, Andy Pitman ought be high on that list. Instead, he helps to sell out the nation that supports him to a corrupt unaudited foreign committee whose recommendations will mainly end up profiting large financial houses.

7. An ad hominem attack is “scientific”?

Notice how we’re not talking about climate science? Why, on a planet that goes around the sun, is a professor of science launching ad hominem attacks? A science undergraduate should grovel with embarrassment for making this mistake. High school debaters have stronger reasoning skills. Yet, the science reporters on the ABC don’t even blink.

So what if I was paid, oh, let’s say, $190,000 a year, by… an oil sheik (I’m not). But if I was, how would that change the satellite recordings that I write about from Universities on the other side of the world from me? What kind of conspiracy theory do you have to hold in your head to nullify the evidence with any information about funding? I’m a commentator forgoodnesssake, I don’t even collect, hold or publish results from the sediments, corals, ice cores, pollen, diatoms, boreholes, or tree rings that I talk about.

“Rabid” is the word for this reasoning.

Aren’t we all grown up enough now to attack the ball and not the man? (Which goes for Penny Sackett too, our Chief Scientist, who said that exact thing tonight on The 7.30 Report. Where was Sackett last week? Did she miss the chance to admonish Pitman for attacking skeptical scientists?)

Look Mum. No logical errors here

Lest anyone think I’m committing the same logical error as Pitman by pointing at his vested interests, let’s put a razor fine point on it. He claims we are winning the debate because we have so much funding. We claim he’s losing because he has no evidence. At no point have I ever said his science is wrong because he is paid.

So why post about his funding?

One: To show that he’s not only illogical, but spectacularly wrong as well. It’s a baseless smear campaign.

Two: The $6 million in research grants vs the $0 in skeptical grants tells us nothing about the atmospheric climate, but shows that there is a Gravy Train, and he is on it. And he’s the one who suggested that people’s opinions were affected by funding. Go soak in that irony.

Three: If people are going to try to bully and smear us, it helps to make it painful for them, by pouring the truth right back at them.

Since he effectively said “follow the money”, I just said, “ok”. And did I mention that the carbon market was worth $130 billion last year?

Speaking of money, who is paid to audit the IPCC?

Officially, no one is. No agency, no institution, no government department. Information from that UN conglomerate committee controls global markets, and yet answers to no elected government, no ASIC, no SEC, no ACCC. Nothing. There ought to be teams of skeptical scientists paid to check on the alarmists, but no one at all is checking, except a few unpaid scientists and bloggers.

The bottom line

Pitman peddles misinformation about science and misinformation about skeptics. He could start by apologizing to the Australian people who pay his salary. Then he could say thanks to the Australian scientists working pro bono to do part of his job for him.

What a sad week for Australian science, a dismal day for Australian universities, and a low point for the ABC.

It’s not so hot for taxpayers either, we’re funding someone who throws baseless speculation and insults back at the same Australian citizens he’s supposed to serve.

Oh, and here’s a list of Pitman’s grants. My word, but he seems well funded by the warmist lobby. Oddly enough for a man who claims he does his IPCC work “out of hours, voluntarily for no funding”, his long list of grants include these:

1999-01
Australian Greenhouse Office (for costs incurred as lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change $15,000

2004-7
Australian Greenhouse Office (for costs incurred as lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change $48,400

“In reality it can cost money to be an active skeptic. To print out handouts, to organize speeches at local community halls, to do mail outs to our representatives, or to pay for transcripts to interviews that misrepresent the science. It says a lot that there are so many people willing to put themselves out, money and time-wise, in order to save us from the scare with no evidence.”

Well done Jo. Academics like Pitman have a vested interest to protect the dogma they have helped to establish. I suspect these same academics proudly wore SUBVERT THE DOMINANT PARADIGM stickers on their cars back in the eighties. Now the catch cry is PROTECT THE DOMINANT PARADIGM. The only problem for Pitman et al is that their paradigm is rapidly loosing its dominance and they can’t see it. The louder they shriek, the more they pontificate, the greater the loss of credibility, if they had any in the first place. Paul Johnson sums up the Pitmans of this world succinctly.

GLOBAL WARMING NOW HAS a powerful, worldwide institutional substructure. If a media outlet has an environment correspondent, or a university a Department of Climate Studies, or a government a Ministry of Global Warming, those involved are certain to be not just believers but fanatical propagandists for the cause. Their livelihood depends on it.

It is guaranteed that more like Pitman will stand up to protect the likes of Rudd and Wong. This will be an interesting year. The ducks are lining up and this unpaid grassroots realist takes great delight in picking them off.

It costs everyone money to advance AGW whether they like it or not, if their taxes are used for that purpose. Apparently Pitman has no problem forcing people to advance his own ideological gravy train, while trying to silence those who decry that shabby treatment.

I believe the major backlash against AGW comes largely from average, hard-working people who are simply speaking out in their own social networks and blogs.

It is largely a grassroots, unfunded reaction of people who support truth as opposed to the spread of government corruption into science.

Has anyone ever done a stock holder search of the emerging “Green” corporations that will profit from AGW and cross reference it to these pompous windbags that call themselves scientists and academics? It would be interesting to see who among the folks like Mann, Hansen, Jones, Briffa, Pitman et al. holds stock in these companies fronted by other windbags like Gore. Stock ownership in the U.S is public record, so I think some research is justified.

Pitman needs to look outside his computer models and surface data. Global cooling theory advanced by Habibullo Abdussamatov, suggests that solar radiation will reach a low value by about 2041 and that global temperatures will decrease by about 1 to 1.5 degree C over the next 50 years before temperatures start warming again. Habibullo is one of an increasing number of scientists supporting the observations that temperature is not increasing. To be fair the ABC’s Sarah Clark did prod Pitman with the right questions, but perhaps was too polite or naive to call him on the porkies. The ABC like the BBC in UK will come under increasing pressure to provide more balance. Perhaps the way the ABC’s heart is to look closely at its super fund and those who direct it. The analysis paid dividends in the UK

Pitman is a complete disgrace to academia and has no right to be drawing huge salary and grants. His expressed lies, distortions and total lack of evidence, not to mention restraint, would once have been enough to fail a first-year student in his university. Things have obviously changed. Or maybe there is one rule for the rulers and another for the undergraduates.

Well I’m yet to make a single cent from being a skeptic and its cost me a bit. I do what I do because its something I care about. As a UNSW graduate I have been appalled at their behavior and their lack of objectivity on climate science (eg Pachauri talks and claims there) I have written to them objecting and never even had the courtesy of a reply.

I have tried to find the accounts for either the IPCC or the WMO. I couldn’t find either but I did find a helpful tome on the financial governance of the WMO and a chatty little piece about the $3.6 Million fraud that they had uncovered…..

Professors have always believed themselves above the rest. What they say has to be right. And the media, of course, years ago put its money on the most sensational story, which was ‘climate doom’. Now, like politicians, they don’t want to admit that they even might have been wrong.

@Malcolm Miller – well this morning Professor Peter Ridd from James Cook university said that all the talk about the demise of the Great Barrier Reef was totally false and the reef is the finest environment in Australia and the best reef in the world. Corals thrive in warm water and the only corals in danger are the corals of Morton Bay where the cold temps are a problem.

Over the past few months, because of the climategate and IPCC fraud fiascos the academics who have had enough of the bullshit feel they can speak out, and they are!

Where the state pays your salary there is no need to be accurate, dependable, honest, or hard working. There is no penalty for the absence of these qualities. Pitman exhibits each and all of them and the only way to close him down is to cease his funding.

“Nearly 100 years ago the unthinkable happened. The “ship that could not be sunk” did so in such a manner it tore the very fabric of reality. Shortcuts were made in the design to maximize profits. These shortcuts were known to the men responsible for the tragedy. Some had warned about the doomed ship, but they could not be heard over the trumpets extolling its historic soundness. Such is the way of man”.
“Many of her passengers refused to accept the fact the ship was sinking.”
Does this sound familiar?

The ABC last night had an Interview with Lord Monckton, during this interview Monckton calling demonstrators ‘Hitler youth’ was shown, no question was asked about this. We know the answer is that he was referring to how propaganda had been used on them.
Polar bears were shown wandering around but no question was asked on polar bears, the viewer was obviously being mentally linked to Al Gores film.
Whenever c02 is mentioned the ABC shows footage of cooling towers and smoking chimneys, if they showed chimneys exhausting co2 nothing would be seen.
The ABC is clearly indulging in subliminal propaganda.
I would urge you all to complain to the ABC and MP.

To Peggy Balfour
Reading that Maurice strong item
Wasn’t it Adnan Khashoggi the arms dealer that was
tangled up with Whitlam & Co’s government way back
in the dark ages, I could be wrong, but that
wouldn’t be the first time.

Not with our defamation laws as they stand, and reminds of someone slandering Professor John Quiggin on the Marohasy blog some years back – that resulted in the threat of legal action by Quiggin and from then on Quiggin’s critics became more circumspect.

However that never stopped the slandering of sceptics by the AGW people, and as you will read in the media this morning, taken to a new heights by The Fairfax press in Melbourne, poking ridicule at Monckton’s well known case of Grave’s disease, apart from describing him as a crackpot. And again no sense in suing – one might be able to win the fight, but end up bankrupt in the process.

One thing is quite clear – by resorting to overt slander and libel of the climate sceptics, the AGW camp has indicated it has lost the game – when the leading traffic lights of the AGW movement in Australia feel compelled to slander and libel Monckton, as they had previously with Professor Ian Plimer last year, then you know the jig is up, but over for we still have the Senate vote on the ETS to hurdle.

This overt ad hominem attack by the AGW Traffic Lights at this time is a concerted group exercise of intimidating the public into not supporting the sceptical position by lampooning the messengers.

Leave it to the comedians to lampoon the Traffic Lights, which they will do in due course, but sceptics must not react in kind, hard as it is, at times.

The solution is simply not to view or listen to the ABC. They do take notice of the ratings etc.

Complaining does not, and will not work. But not tuning in, now that would be something they would react to. I personally do not watch or listen to the ABC – period, whether Radio National or regional services.

The strength of capitalism is the ability of the consumers to make a free choice – don’t support the ABC by tuning in.

Clive popham
I agree with you, I have seen too much propaganda filming cooling towers which exhaust water vapour. Some sneaky filming of these cooling towers is done just after sunset which is about 20 minutes before last light. The result is the towers look black and the water vapour looks dark and filthy.

If critics of AGW are seen as “organised” then we must become organised. I emailed the science show on the Pitman matter, begging Robin Williams to treat people against AGW with a modicum of respect. The patronising response was from “RW” was that I should read an article in the Sunday times (to get the facts). I responded that I did not read the Sunday Times, I read scientific journals. I did not like the response, but at least the complaint drew attention. I strongly urge others to email the ABC, parliamentarians, the Bureau of Meteorology etc. Remember, in the vast majority of cases these people are humble public servants and genuinely “nice” people. Always be courteous.

Let us peer deeply into the subconscious of the warmists to catch a glimpse of why they cling so tenaciously to the belief skeptics are paid by outside interests.

First, there’s the issue of transference, whereby they assume the skeptics’ world operates the same as theirs. They get funded by big corporate interests, therefore we must be too.

Second, is hubris. The warmists identify so completely with the righteousness of their cause and the prestige of belonging to an esteemed community that contradicting or confounding evidence is experienced as irrelevant. Even as the good ship AGW flounders on the rocks, they vainly struggle to prevent it sinking by commanding the rocks to move instead of correcting their own rotten seamanship.

Third, they’re attempting to diminish the validity of the skeptics position by pretending they’re a fringe minority. It’s reassuring to believe there are only a few well-funded professionals working full time rather than huge numbers of unpaid volunteers.

The fact is every day more and more people are turning away from belief in AGW as they recognize this has been either sheer incompetence on the part of climate science or there has been ill-intent from the outset.

Only a minuscule fraction of AGW skeptics take the time to blog and post comments on the internet. In reality there are vast numbers of people who think the whole idea of CO2 causing climate change is complete rubbish. We know because we meet and talk with them all the time.

But hey, this is fantastic, and so easily rebutted and so transparently phoney.

These comments are the back to wall desperate whinings of losers. They know themselves they have nothing else to say and it’s little more than waving the white flag. In addition it identifies the ones that we’ll shoot first come the revolution.

Clive popham – to understand the Hitler Youth reference you have to go back to the source. Lord Monckton was holding meeting with sceptics at Copenhagen when the meeting was interrupted by a group of warmist youth who were abusing Monckton and his audience. A couple of the old timers who had experienced WWII remarked to Monckton that the youth were acting just like the Hitler Youth did in their day.

Slightly O/T but this links in with my argument on vested interests in the previous thread. Here is a link to “The Green Rich List” published by The Times. Now tell me this is not a large vested interest… bear in mind that this is just individual investments, not that of governments and corporations.

BTW is it time to drop the like/dislike widget? It is clear some troll is simply marking down most submissions arbitrarily rendering the rating system useless.

Interesting to watch the negative votes – 10 it would seem – that stopped after 10:08 am. Amusingly, they obviously didn’t read all of the comments, and voted down comments that were supportive of Pitman. I doubt that was their intention. LOL.

Minor point Jo – in the previous thread my last post links to the IPCC’s principles and procedures document. In their own policy they state that they have to consider non peer-reviewed work as well as the peer-reviewed. Therefore they opened the door to using unscientific sources a long time ago. According to their own policy using WWF, Greenpeace, a mountaineering magazine or a student paper is all fair game.

In other words they can use an editorial from Playboy if they think it relates to climate change.

Well, we may be upside down to you (or vice versa), but something are the same between Oz and the colonies:

1. The media is not doing its job
2. College professors are arrogant and stupid (not ignorant, just lacking in any common sense).

Oh, and I noticed the negatives as well. If you get to many, your comments are hidden (you have to click to read them). I suspect it is one of those poor warmist that only make a quarter million a year to not get their message out.

Treat as badges of honour the “Dislikes” of numerous posts. Those who know the quality of your work will recognise for what they are these juvenile and mean-spirited attempts to discredit your blog. Those who perpetrate them are unlikely ever to know better. Their panic as the AGW hoax unravels around them is almost palpable.

Regards the thumbs down, one person can’t keep voting over and over again can they? I think it’s great that a group of them have decided to “sabotage” this blog.

Hah!! Is that all you got you alarmists? Ran out of reasoned logical arguments and reduced to giving thumbs down on a blog. That says a helluva lot about you. Have the guts to post your arguments. tell us why you think Jo’s article is wrong. Hell, you may even have evidence Jo is getting paid lots of moolah for this, c’mon lets hear it you gutless lot.

Now here is how you debate, not by gutless thumbs down clicking. I say something, and you refute it. Here you go, I’ll start…

List of grants for the good Proff.

FundingInternal funding

1991
MURG Simulation of droughts in GCMs $1,800

1992
MURG Seasonality parameterisation in GCMs $3,600

1993
MURG Role of the land surface in the development of East Coast Lows $6,000

1994
MURG Validation of a land surface scheme against Australian stream flow data and a catchment hydrological model $2,800

Bulldust, an article in Playboy is likely to be less political and the pictures might not be the inevitable polar bare!
I emaile Pitman last week, I had some pleasant replies but they were just following the brainwashing not free thought at all, one question I asked him, the reply was”no idea” was why if CO2 is so bad do we all, by law, drive round with a catalytic converter on our cars, they reduce fuel efficiency and from a lesser amount of CO and some trace gasses produce a large amount of CO2 and heat, to me this was the first proof that it is a huge scam, otherwise the cats would have gone, in the UK modern cars with computer fueling and ingnition say 1992 onwards, pass emissions without the cat, as long as the tester does not notice it is not there phisicaly, useless and expensive.

Well put Jo.
A couple of other points you could have put under 3/ Misleading the public are:
a) ignoring measured CO2 data and putting in place doubtful proxy information from one icecore site (emulating the tree ring fraud for temperature)
b) ignoring from both recent (since 1850) measurements and older icecore data (such as the antarctic Vostok) that shows Temperature leads CO2 which the opposite the unproven hypothesis, of man emitted CO2 significantly increasing atmospheric temperature.
c) hiding from the public that heat and mass transfer associated with water vapour and clouds (water droplets and ice particles) provide the only significant “greenhouse” effect. (although the term “greenhouse” should not be used because the atmosphere of the earth is open to space and not closed like in a true greenhouse or like a motor car with closed doors and windows)

Re: #58, Need to be careful about the context of point C) greenhouse effect in realtion to open/clsoed systems, because although we see many sceptics quoting thrid law thermodynamics (cold body cannot heat up a warmer one) warmed CO2 does slow the rate of cooling of warmer bodies ( albeit slightly because its sprad quite thinly and not efficient at passing its energy on via convection). Still, the basics are that warmer, rising gases, pass on a greenhouse “effect” by slowing the rate of temperature change in hotter bdoies. Try looking into Roy Spencers web sites. There lots of good science there and the anaolgy is a hot cup of coffee next to a thermos flask of how water. The coffee cup is cooler but will slow the cooling of the thermos to the air it surrounds. clear as mud?

of course this is minscule compared to effects of sun magnetic fields,cosmic rays, low level clouds, aerosols, oceans, the earths place in the milky way, etc.

Can I get a favor? You know that in California the people have the power of recall when a pol is deemed incompetent in mid term. That’s how we got the Schwarzeneggar.
We also have the power of referendum to nullify obnoxous legislation passed against the wishes of the electorate.
So after much urging from some of my dear friends in the blog world Rep Dan Logue (a state legislator) has created in conjunction with the People’s Advocate Initiative Committee a referendum on the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

With a bit of publicity and some volunteers to collect petitions we can put global warming to a straight up or down vote by the people of California at the 2010 election.

Needless to say this has never happened before. The people were not consulted or given a voice to protest, as Arnold sold us out to the green activists and their syncophants in the Democratic party.

Jo could you hang a banner ad for the Suspend AB32 movement?
It might be that I’m the only Californian who reads your blog, but that doesn’t matter. You are international. That will get us noticed.

I do this in my spare time for truth, justice, and the American way. Never been paid a dime.

Someone emailed me a letter to the editor of the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin dated 22/12/09. The letter was from Terence Cardwell and was scathing about the climate change misinformation stream. A small excerpt is copied hereunder:

Coal fired Power Stations are highly efficient with very little heat
loss and can generate massive amount of energy for our needs. They can
generate power at efficiency of less than 10,000 b.t.u. per kilowatt
and cost wise that is very low.
*SNIP*
The maximum size wind generator is 3 Megawatts, which can rarely be
attained on a continuous basis because it requires substantial forces
of wind. And for the same reason only generate when there is
sufficient wind to drive them. This of course depends where they are
located but usually they only run for 45% -65% of the time, mostly
well below maximum capacity. They cannot be relied for a ‘base load’
because they are too variable. And they certainly could not be used
for load control.
*SNIP*
T.L. Cardwell

To the Editor I thought I should clarify. I spent 25 years in the
Electricity Commission of NSW working, commissioning and operating the
various power units. My last was the 4 X 350 MW Munmorah Power Station
near Newcastle. I would be pleased to supply you any information you
may require.”

The letter is long and full of good arguments. What are the copyright implications of copying it here in full? There is an email address for the chap, so I could ask him directly.

MattB There is some amusement in that … after all science is not a popularity contest. If it were we skeptics would be royally shafted because I am hard pressed to fins any celebrity who is not a confirmed follower of the Church of Climatology. One notable exception is David Bellamy, and we saw where that got him

Note the massive amount of direct energy exports. Then you have to add to this the huge amount of energy-intensive exports from Australia (such as aluminium for instance).

Then you look at the tiny little contributions from renewables at the bottom of the flowchart (in green). The vast majority of the Australian renewable energy budget is bagasse (the burning of sugar cane waste material).

I really think that picture helps to put the situation into perspective.

The irony of the Thumbs Down, is that thanks to MattB being unfairly targeted yesterday I raised the bar on the dislikes from 12 to 30. If that hadn’t happened all those first 40 comments might have been hidden…

Actually – I think the dislikes have proven themselves to be useful today. We can guess now that Andy has at least 12 friends, and that none of them could think of a reply to point out any errors.

I’m glad at least they felt they had a small outlet for their frustration. I hope they got some satisfaction.

BTW: There is an image in this post, but I hear that it’s not visible for all. If you can’t see it, can you please contact me, joanne at joannenova.com.au. I need to find out how many people this applies to.

I attend the Monckton lecture at the NPC in Canberra yesterday, main attendees were from the National Farmers Federation. An excellent entertaining lecture and well worth the $20. It was worth much more but as a retiree I would not attended otherwise. Near the end a question from the floor was how do we fix science that has gone completely of the rails. The answer from LM was we must separate science from government funding. This must scare the hell out of the likes of Pitman. Politicians are his livelihood to continue in the style he has become accustomed to large dollops of alarmism must be delivered regularly to convince his source of income to keep spitting out money. If he can’t then this is the end of a career since he needs students. Around 10 billion dollars per annum is paid to support Uni’s and science gets preferential treatment. His bread and butter is students who believe and want to know more. Generally not many want to do science it does not pay well. He is in marketing mode to ensure his business continues nothing more nothing less. Possibly he does not see that nor what is happening but he is in for a big shock. Consider this link http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Rudds-three-way-battle-pd20100203-2ARWT?OpenDocument&src=kgb you will need to register it is really worth reading. The gist is that big business is seeing an attack on their assets from a number of fronts. The company “Morgan Stanley” is saying Laos is more stable in this regard than Australia. If the CPRS is pushed hard then then there maybe lots of money to make sure the Liberals win government. Where then will those who depend on CC for a living be?

Jo,
I wish a sceptic writer of your calibre would start writing in India. I have started writing,i my local language Marathi. I am getting good response too. All the best to you. Keep up the good work.

I think it’s high time that the “professionals” in the employ ofgovernment, either direct or through grants, be held to the same standards as society hold e.g. Professional Engineers.

Professional Engineers can’t put “escape clauses” in fine print on the inside covers of their reports. They bear professional responsibility and have to bear the costs of professional liability insurance as well as additional insurance to cover themselves for damages in the case of special contracts. They are also liable to criminal charges when the fit hits the shanin a big way.

Meanwhile; government-funded organizations like CSIRO, the BoM and the Ivory Tower Magnates pollute the information landscape with reports and recommendations that are invariable prefaced by disclaimers of all responsibility. What we get for thousands of millions of dollars invested in research is nothing more than “opinion pieces”.

That’s a very bad investment of taxpayers’ money. The expectation is that the Minister bears responsibility, but even if they understood their portfolio subject matter, their resignation perhaps serves best as a reward for those publishing the worthless opinion pieces.

If you had given an honest email address you would have recieved this personal reply from me to your multiple unreleased comments:

“Dan,

if you read my reply to your comments on the last thread you’ll find you are held in moderation until you provide one piece of empirical evidence we can discuss to back up your claim there are thousands, or admit you can’t and apologize.

I’m holding your comments indefinitely until then. Either you back up what you say (ie show you are here for an honest conversation) or say sorry (ie that you have manners).

So you don’t need to do much to be able to post. It’s up to you.

There’s no point people repeatedly throwing in comments with baseless claims. It’s too low standard.

Jo ”

And also this:
“So can you give me a simple YES or NO answer: Are you claiming that if there was NO CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere, the surface of the globe would only be around 1.1 degrees celsius cooler on average?

a friend of mine has sent a letter to Senator Wong today – contents of the summary attached to that letter follow

Contrary to Senator Wong’s public assertions in hurried defense of UN IPCC errors on
Himalayan glaciers, such errors are not exceptional, they are demonstrably typical.
Blatant exaggerations and gross errors typify UN IPCC reports bypassing peer review
and using unscientific anecdotes falsely masquerading as ‘evidence’.
The UN IPCC’s core claim of high temperatures is unfounded, was made by junior
contributors and breached peer review. After it succeeded in driving unfounded worldwide
climate alarm it was withdrawn.
Both of Earth’s accurate sets of global temperature records show no net warming since
1958.
Contrary to UN IPCC predictions, satellites measuring 24 hours every day have found
no tropospheric warming.
Corruption of Ground Temperature Records used by the UN IPCC
• Climate Research Unit, a key source of UN IPCC temperature data is corrupt
(Climategate)
• USA’s NASA and NOAA are facing claims of corruption. Both Provide global
temperature data to UN IPCC.
UN IPCC’s core claim on atmospheric CO2 levels was falsified.
UN IPCC political summary reports presented to media and national governments
contradicted UN IPCC’s own scientists’ reports.
Amazongate highlights UN IPCC’s unfounded alarm over natural wonders and
ecosystems.
Student and hikers wrote UN IPCC’s claims of unfounded disappearing mountain ice
alarm.
Unfounded UN IPCC alarm over storms has been fabricated.
Unfounded UN IPCC alarm contradicted by eminent scientists—experts in their field.
Unfounded UN IPCC deliberate hurricane panic contradicting science.
Unfounded UN IPCC alarm over disease contradicts science.
Unfounded UN IPCC alarm in was often inserted by activists, not scientists.
Unfounded UN IPCC alarm about human food production.
Unfounded UN IPCC alarm propagates other unfounded alarm.
Unfounded government alarm about the Barrier Reef.
Zero scientific evidence for catastrophes – all unfounded.
More than 20 additional cases of unsubstantiated UN IPCC alarm are being exposed.
UN IPCC Does Not Work for National Governments – it Works for its UNEP agenda.
It is an Indictment of Senator Wong that when Senator Steve Fielding asked her
simple, basic questions on climate, Senator Wong and her advisers could not provide
scientific proof – they have no proof humans caused global warming
Lead Author and Editing Reviewer of UN IPCC chapter claiming human causation of
warming has no scientifically measured real-world evidence humans caused warming.
Data obtained from the UN IPCC itself exposes UN IPCC processes as unscientific.
Although UN IPCC Chairman Pachauri repeatedly implied 4,000 scientists endorse
the UN IPCC’s core claim that human CO2 warmed Earth, only five (5) endorsed the
claim. And there’s doubt they were even scientists. The Prime Minister has assisted the
UN IPCC in spreading this falsity.
In absence of sound, scientific data, the UN IPCC creatively conjured erroneous
models to fabricate ‘data’.
UN IPCC Chairman Pachauri’s apparent conflicts of financial interest are public
knowledge – and seemingly hugely significant.
The UN IPCC and its executive have thwarted and discredited real scientific research
stifling real science and human progress.
UN IPCC senior members have repeatedly justified the use of unfounded alarm.
Driven by the UN IPCC deviation of funds to a non-problem (natural global warming)
prevents addressing real humanitarian and environmental challenges.
The focus on natural global warming is a damaging attack on the environment.
Canadian environmentalist Lawrence Solomon puts it into perspective on page 210 of
his book entitled: “The Deniers” when he says, quote: “But Kyoto is not an insurance
policy. Just the opposite, it is the single greatest threat today to the global
environment, because it makes carbon into currency. Carbon is the element upon
which all living things are built. With carbon a kind of currency—which is what all
carbon taxes and carbon trading and similar schemes do—all ecosystems suddenly
have a commercial value that makes them subject to manipulation for gain.”
The Garnaut Review relies entirely and only on UN IPCC Reports.
It seems that for the government, it is the CPRS that matters, not CO2
Senator Wong: Have you caught the UN IPCC disease of creating unfounded alarm?
Senator Wong misrepresenting science and climate to her own party.
the vast majority of people inherently care for the environment, yet Senator Wong
foments unfounded guilt and fear.
The UN IPCC’s core greenhouse gas effect ‘theory’ contradicts the laws of physics and
nature – it’s not even a theory, not even a supposition. It’s a falsity.
The UN IPCC’s ‘theory’ is impossible, un-natural.
Regular seasonal variation of atmospheric CO2 levels shows Nature controls CO2
levels and human production of CO2 cannot cause global warming.
Copenhagen contortions were due primarily to there being no scientifically measured
real-world data that humans caused global warming – None.
If the UN IPCC was a company, it would be up for fraud.
UN IPCC reports are no basis for government’s global warming policy and CPRS.
Dismiss the CPRS.
Request for Inquiry to overcome UN IPCC fraud.
Conclusions
Details and references are provided in the third document.
Public revelations prove the UN IPCC’s patterns of unscientific behaviour:
• science is being bent, distorted, fabricated, tampered with, destroyed, hidden, misrepresented;
• repeatedly falsities have been fabricated;
• activists, non-experts and non-scientists bypass or distort peer review rendering it useless
and rendering science broken;
• expert reviewers are prevented from checking the claimed results;
• yet the UN IPCC fraudulently attempts to reassure people the fabrications are the product of
scientific procedures. Dishonesty prevails and is embedded systemically to achieve political
objectives;
• the aim of unscientific UN IPCC claims appears clearly to be to spur public alarm to
motivate government action in support of UN IPCC objectives. This has been achieved by
politically altering scientific reports and feeding these to the media for frightening headlines
- achieved.
Fraud is rife in the UN IPCC’s core temperature claim and its associated claims of unfounded
alarm. It has been driven from the highest levels of the UN IPCC and its sponsoring
organisation, the UNEP from the UN IPCC’s inception. The UN IPCC’s global warming
fabrication is dishonest and fraudulent – and, in places, possibly criminal.
The UN IPCC’s distortion of the scientific method, it’s blind unfounded criticism of justified
scientific scepticism, its politicised policies and its political propaganda could well damage
science in the public’s eye for decades.
Global warming is not a problem. There is a problem with the United Nations – a very serious
problem. There is a serious problem with the Australian government’s department of Climate
Change and Water and the behaviour of its minister, Senator Wong.
Senator Wong’s actions have seriously and for no sound reason damaged:
• science and particularly climate science, the scientific process and peer review;
• the environment—and worsen the greatest global environmental threat (carbon traading);
• the economy—and worsen humanitarian threats, particularly to the poor and vulnerable.
Senator Wong’s actions, through unfounded coercion and misrepresentations aimed at
encouraging Australia’s adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s
Copenhagen agreement threaten to:
• destroy personal freedom of Australians;
• destroy Australia’s sovereignty and democracy through ceding governance to the UN;
• erode morality, misrepresent humanity and derail people’s inherent environmental care;
• end energy independence, the key to our civilisation’s productivity, material security, wellbeing
and ease.
Senator Wong’s immediate and unsound defence of the UN IPCC over the unfolding
Himalayan glaciers scandal demonstrated Senator Wong seems to be either:
• ill-advised; and/or;
• blind to UN IPCC flaws despite having these made clear to her on numerous occasions in
writing; and/or
• involved in corruptly, fraudulently using the UN IPCC reports for personal/political gain.
The UN IPCC not only does not use solid data, sound analysis, objective assessment and
considered judgement in arriving at its conclusions, the UN IPCC systemically and consistently
avoids solid data, sound analysis, objective assessment and considered judgement in fabricating
its core claims. This applies to many of its supporting emotive claims driving public alarm
apparently aimed at motivating governments and voters to comply with its agenda.
The institutions of government and major political parties have failed Australia and the
environment. We need less government, not bigger remote UN governance.
The current Prime Minister’s 2007 election campaign on climate as Opposition Leader had no
credible foundation and misled the people.
Adaptation to natural climate change is the only plausible policy. To deviate valuable resources
to a failed theory peddled by bogus and fraudulent science leaves the nation and the planet
vulnerable. To destroy Australia’s economy for a non-problem is irresponsible and heartless.
With the evidence now at hand, any politician assisting that deviation of resources will likely be
doing so with no scientific foundation and for purely political reasons. Such politicians will be
responsible for the deaths, in undeveloped nations, of millions of people who will likely die, or at
best, live in greater misery
Please, Senator Wong:
• launch an immediate, independent inquiry into the UN IPCC and its reports;
• cease the destruction of science;
• cease the use of fear based on a combination of erroneous computer models projecting
unfounded and unlikely future scenario with anecdotes that bypassed peer review;
• cease labelling and promoting CO2 as a pollutant;
• dismiss the CPRS
• until you have scientifically measured real-world proof that human production of CO2
caused global warming, cease your unfounded and false claims.

Whilst the simile of ‘Hitler Youth’ being applied to AGW demonstrators may be apposite I do not think it does those contesting the outpourings of fraudlent scientists any favours. Hyperbole is not the way of logic. One cannot but admire the work that Lord Monckton has done to publish the sinister activities of left wing scientists who have promulgated global warming as a cover for other programmes. However calling the demonstrators ‘Hitler Youth’ is getting a bit too close to Godwins law. Keep up the good work my Lord but please do not bring in Adolph or his chorts.

I’m personally honoured by the organized “dislike” blitz on our posts – maybe the debate isn’t over after all. Here they come, flailing away, dragged back to account. We will scrap over CO2 but the Chinese have turned off the oxygen, so it makes you wonder what game they are watching – AGW now a domestic political sideshow.

And I see that Abbott’s plan has blitzed Rudd’s in an online poll(Australian).

Good point, Matt and thanks for bringing it up. I’m MP staff but the procedure is the same, and I can tell you that letters like that would not get a reading. You’d be lucky if the staff read it and the Member/Minister certainly will never see it. Why? It is simply much too long and rambling.

If you want to maximise your chances of getting through (no guarantee)and even be counted, you need to keep your letters/emails short and to the point, preferably in dot points and make your desired outcome clear from the first paragraph, or better still in the subject line.

Hi Anne Kit
thanks for your comment; I do feel a little saddened by what it implies about MP’s though – that is they read in ‘sound bites’ or ‘headings’; allarmingly your comment implies they allow their staff to choose what they read and they are not prepared to assimilate the contents of more than one para; I can tell you that I used to work in the Court system and no one read in ‘sound bites’ or ‘headings’ nor did anyone allow staff to choose what they read but I must say I did suspect that it happened with mail to MP’s and letters to editors; I’m sure it doesn’t happen with all MP’s however

Shared a room with this bloke in Liverpool, now he is on the defensive it is alot harder to be a pompous git, you are seeing his true colors. I have been watching with increasing disbelief at the Global Warming scam, knowing it was based on some very dubious computer code developed in the 80′s.
I take great offense when these people on Gov grants who never venture outside of their AC’ed offices. They would realise that the earth is a very big and the processes shaping it are very complex. I would like to see Pitman and the rest of them get ‘a day job’, ie 1 in private industry.
Thank God ‘the science is no longer settled’. Get ready for the Pollies to throw them overboard to save their sinking ships.

In this case they are talking about sea level, but it’s also a perfect fit for the problems with surface temperature estimation and rainfall for that matter. A great many factors are simply not understood and measurement coverage is sketchy and error-prone compared with the very tiny signals that are being detected.

Maybe in 50 to 100 years we will have some real understanding of these matters. Right now we have hand waving and beat-ups by political interests.

Tony I don’t have a direct quote at mo but if memory serves me correctly, Monckton was there with his wife (dutch lady?) and another old couple. His wifes parents and his guests have had direct experience with the Hitler youth distrupting meetings in the mid 30′s. I believe Monckton also said one of his guests started crying.

As other commenters from Albert at 39 onwards have observed, the dislikes are way up. Way, WAY up.
The warmist defence squad is moving into action. Computer mice are clicking all over the globe. Well, I hope they’re solar-powered mice!

MattB – as someone who has had to draft a number of ministerial letters to the public I can assure you we all have a very dry sense of humour in Government… it is how we survive. “Yes Minister” is not a comedy show… it is a reference manual.

“I never thought I would see this in my lifetime,” he said, sadness and anger competing on his face. “The last time young people politicized and indoctrinated by the State broke up a meeting of their opponents here in Copenhagen by chanting mindless, repetitive slogans was during the Nazi occupation of Denmark during the Second World War.”

“Another German in the audience said this was the saddest day of his life. He, too, had hoped that mindless, compulsory agreement with the State and disruption of discussions by anyone who disagreed had been swept away from Europe forever at the end of the Second World War”.

There is also a reply by Monckton to a letter from a British Uni student. Please take the time to read at the link provided above.

I’m no scientist, just an interested by-stander.
Questions for the egg-heads.
1. The entire EU have been carbon trading for 5 years now. Does anybody know what effect it has had on CO2 emissions ?

2. When scientists talk about greenhouse gasses they never mention the largest one, water vapour (98%). CO2 is only a very minor one that is mixed up with a bunch of other GHGs that alltogether make 2%.
Why is water vapour never mentioned?

Pitman: “My personal view is that climate scientists are losing the fight with climate sceptics”

I note that he doesn’t mention that many of the sceptics ARE climate scientists. In other words there are scientists and there are corrupters. Nice one Andy, but it looks to me that the warmers are going out for sympathy here. Could it be falling apart?

Hmmmm, I didn’t know that was how the thumbs down icon worked. That was a pretty cheap slimy trick by some alarmists to censor debate, not surprising actually, but still pretty cheap and slimy. It would appear that our alarmist friends will go to any length to stifle debate and surpress free speech and the flow of ideas. It would seem like there is an equivilant of ACORN operating here in our little haven of truth.

I note that he doesn’t mention that many of the sceptics ARE climate scientists. In other words there are scientists and there are corrupters. Nice one Andy, but it looks to me that the warmers are going out for sympathy here. Could it be falling apart?

Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer says she will no longer tolerate errors by climate researchers. She expressed her anger to Dutch researchers who presented their annual report on the state of the climate on Wednesday.

A number of errors were recently found in several international climate research reports. A new error has been revealed by the Dutch weekly Vrij Nederland, which noticed that a 2007 United Nations report wildly overestimated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level. Rather than the 55 percent quoted, the actual figure is 20 percent.

Ali, I read the link to Crikey re writing to politicians. Most of the article is about how to maliciously make more work for ministers’ staff and not really relevant to what we want to achieve here. It is true what he says about Ministers/MPs rarely if ever reading their own mail, though. You’d be amazed at the amount of unsolicited mail even a State MP receives every day, by snail mail and email, a fair amount of it from crackpots. Mail from constituents IS read and passed on to the “boss”, but most mail comes from outside the electorate.

And this is without counting the endless committee reports and bills MPs have to read. (These they DO read themselves). If they had to read their own emails as well they’d never get any work done.

So Buzz, I’m afraid that is the reality. Court officials probably don’t get that much unsolicited mail.

And Baa, Monckton’s wife is Danish, and the Moncktons are not really “old”; they are only in their fifties …

Speaking of money, who is paid to audit the IPCC?
Officially, no one is. No agency, no institution, no government department. Information from that UN conglomerate committee controls global markets, and yet answers to no elected government, no ASIC, no SEC, no ACCC. Nothing. There ought to be teams of skeptical scientists paid to check on the alarmists, but no one at all is checking, except a few unpaid scientists and bloggers.

Jo, that’s the problem in a nutshell. Nothing about the UN is accountable to anyone in any notable way at all. North Korea made head of their panel on human rights violation? Please!

And once global warming got started the smell of power and money did the rest.

Baa Humbug:
February 4th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Regards the thumbs down, one person can’t keep voting over and over again can they? I think it’s great that a group of them have decided to “sabotage” this blog.

Actually you can. just delete the cookie from your browser and then the site thinks you have not voted.

Actually you can. just delete the cookie from your browser and then the site thinks you have not voted.

I had hoped that no one would point that out. Now every miscrant around knows how. And it’s not that it’s so hard to figure out if you’re Internet savvy but why give it to those who didn’t have it figurd out?

Just listened to the interview and wish that we had an interviewer in the UK broadcast media who was even 10% as questioning as Sarah Clark was in this one.
Gives me hope that our practical and much admired cousins in Australia will be the ones to break through this dam of crap.

I was pretty disgusted at his ABC interview where he justified the undignified comments in the UEA emails about John Daly – ‘future generations will hold them accountable’. So here’s an ad hominem attack. He only came to NSW riding the (petty) coat tails of Henderson-Sellers, and my guess (I havent followed their career until climate change became politicised) is, it was 1 grant/job after another based on research reviewed by the same ‘mates’. I dont know if Pitman has any children, but AHS hated them. Sorry for the rant, but they aren’t the sort of people that like many other people, let alone future generations. I have 5 kids (& 1 wife, haha), and I do care for their future.
Keep up the good work in true science (asking questions), I was so concerned in Oct09 I got my vote back as our member for tanganey (Dr Jensen, one of the few honest polies and one of the few scientists in parliament) bravely opposed AGW against his party. I support climate research, but it should not be above discussion.
PS: I am currently on an oil rig off Bergen, Norway and its b colder than the average – must be climate change!

Radical warmistas I now refer to as the Khmer Rouge, not Nazis – the reason? It seems to me that Pol Pots view of the world is more in line with their ideals – i.e. destroy civilisation and move to some agrarian utopia.

RE: the Thumbs down thing. Jo – do you have a record of the IP addresses? If so, check to see if they’re similar. If they are then it might be worth looking up the IP to find out where they came from, just out of interest. If it was a student prank, then good, I say – maybe now they’re here they’ll take the time to get a real education and put some pressure on their professor?

I reckon we should never let these guys off the hook. Continue to refer to it a Global Warming. Keep arguing against C02 reductions (even when they stop mentioning it, drop in in somewhere).

HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE for EACH and EVERY Comment they have made.

They’re on the ropes, they know it, so lets fry these buggers in their own oil (metaphorically speaking).

As an example, I wish I could remember the climate scientist interviewed on the 7:30 report before Copenhagen who claimed that he knew all the scientists in China and that they were all completely on board with Global warming etc etc. Man, I wish I knew their name so that comment can be used against him for the rest of his “career”.

Radical warmistas I now refer to as the Khmer Rouge, not Nazis – the reason? It seems to me that Pol Pots view of the world is more in line with their ideals – i.e. destroy civilisation and move to some agrarian utopia.

Sorry for marking you down Twaki, but O/T links to your own web site … care to contribute to the debate some? You do this on WUWT too (where you were warned about it), and I assume several other sites if they permit. At what point does it simply become spam? Perhaps a better approach would be to ask for a link in the links&sources page?

Go on over to Roger Pielke Jnr’s blog for an interesting take on how IPCC misrepresented the published literature. There are several examples where the conclusion in the cited papers is at odds with the IPCC report of the same papers. RPJr himself has had his research misrepresented, so in that particular case there is no doubt of the misrepresentation and there is no doubt that the view arrived at by IPCC was not in accord with the published literature on the subject. Even though this was pointed out in reviewer comments, it was not corrected. Even now, IPCC has decided not to correct it, despite the fact that the author has clearly and publicly stated he was misrepresented. Pilke Jr cites several examples that he is aware of, but the question remains: if this is what we know of, how many people simply “rolled over” because they were of the opinion that AGW is real and they didn’t want to be seen as “denialists”? And of those, how many would have realised that they were not the only ones whose research had been misrepresented? Would they have been as ready to “fall into line” if they had known that, say, 50% of the research had been distorted to suit the case? That adverse results of AGW were cited, but positives suppressed? There is a reason why you swear to “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” and while I’m sure that in most cases IPCC reported the truth, it certainly appears that they did not report the whole truth in many cases. That’s deception by omission.

Jo, I know you are pressed for time and have much to do, but I think a thorough appraisal of the IPCC AR4 and it’s cited references is long overdue. It’s clear from what we already know that the processes put in place for IPCC were either ignored or manipulated by authors and lead authors to get the result they wanted. A quantification of this would be invaluable, IMO – anyone citing IPCC as a source could simply be shown how badly IPCC distorted the published literature. And no, I don’t have to the time to do it either, so please don’t ask. I am, however, prepared to help as much as time allows (which, alas, is not much). I’m sure others feel the same. Perhaps you could organise something similar to the surfacestations.org effort of Anthony Watts? If so, please keep us all informed.

Thanks Ali Waller (#107) and Anne-Kitt Littler (#113) for useful advice on letter writing. Anne, your comment is interesting. I have two questions:

1. Would you please confirm that if I wrote to my local member, they will look at it? (Which means I need to put my address or state that in am in her electorate). I have to say my local member has replied personally to criticism in the past (concerning draconian anti-terror laws and democracy).

2. If I keep writing to my local member, refusing to accept being fobbed off, how long before I get the automatic bin treatment (typically)?

3. Isn’t it a good thing to get letters circulated around the system, as in the Crikey plan, because doesn’t that at least alert the system to the fact that there is opposition out there?

Neil Fisher #129. Great Idea Neil. Could you please point me to the surface station effort of Watts? It might be possible to break the job up into small bits that can be assigned to individuals to follow up, then collate the results. that would take organisation, I know, but the result could be quite powerful if even, say, 10% of the citations were disowned by their authors. 20% would be big and 50% would be spectacular.

If California rescends AB32 (that’s Cali’s version of the ETS, which was signed into law what seemed like just a few minutes before our state economy collapsed)
do you think the establishment media would cover that?

Would they be able to stick their fingers in their ears, like they did with the minority overthrow of Turnbull?

Trust me it didn’t make the papers here.

Do you think they would sell it as a simple breaking and entering, like they did with climategate?

Do you think they would pretend like it was a partial success, like they did with Copenhagen?

Now I know what the powers that be will do. They are going to throw a media blanket over the thing, hoping that no-one ever hears about it.
That’s how they got the extreemist Global Warming believer Barbara Boxer re elected to the Senate last time.

I mean I still don’t know what her opponents name was in that election, and I am 100% certain I voted for him, her, or it.

I’m assuming you are Australian as I can’t vouch for the system in other countries.

Ad 1: If you write/email/phone your local Member of Parliament, they will definitely look at it, and no you can’t be anonymous for obvious reasons. You will always be taken seriously if you are within their electorate for the simple reason – if nothing else – that they are trying to win your vote!

Ad2: Not likely to happen, refer above, unless you are a crank without a cause (and all offices have at least a couple of “regulars” who pop into the office for a chat and a rant from time to time. They are generally treated with patience and tolerance, unless they become abusive.

Ad3: A good example of mass mailings having an effect was of course what happened at the beginning of December last year in Australia when 10s of thousands of emails were received in Federal electorate offices across Australia regarding the ETS. We all know what happened from that. It even got press coverage in its own right and my Federal colleagues are still talking about it!

But it has to be massive to have that kind of effect. What was different about it was that apparently none of the emails were the “templates” that the Crikey article mentions; they were all individually written, passionate statements. Mine was among them!

Short and to the point is always best. Put your main statement/demand in the subject line.

When the ETS next comes up for a vote, somehow that’s what we have to make happen again.

Further on letters of AGW dissent, I have been engaged in numerous thrusts and parries with an influential media person who doesn’t know me from Adam, and have to say that I HAVE got replies and I have been treated politely. Of course I have not won the argument, but I may have made a little change of attitude (even if it’s just a bit of respect for the AGW dissenters) and that counts. Each of us is only a tiny voice in the masses, but unless we speak we will not be heard (and if we shout we will not be heard either). So I think,as DEan Martin used to say “Keep those cards and letters coming in folks”. Know your facts, keep it sharp, be courteous, do it. It’s better than whingeing.

“he’s a railway engineer fercrissakes” – what an absurd comment from someone who is hot on anyone else using pointless stetements of qualifications to discredit someone.

“Pachauri was awarded an MS degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, in 1972, as well as a joint Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Economics in 1974.[6]

He served as Assistant Professor (August 1974 – May 1975) and Visiting Faculty Member (Summer 1976 and 1977) in the Department of Economics and Business at NC State.

On his return to India, he joined the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad, as Member Senior Faculty (June 1975 – June 1979) and went on to become Director, Consulting and Applied Research Division (July 1979-March 1981). He joined TERI as Director in April 1981. [7]

Pachauri was on the Board of Governors, Shriram Scientific and Industrial Research Foundation (September 1987); the Executive Committee of the India International Centre, New Delhi (1985 onwards); the Governing Council of the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi (October 1987 onwards); and the Court of Governors, Administrative Staff College of India (1979-81) and advises such companies as Pegasus Capital Advisors, GloriOil, the Chicago Climate Exchange, Toyota, Deutsche Bank and NTPC.[16]

On 14 July 2008, Pachauri received the title UNIDO Goodwill Ambassador.

Pachauri has been awarded the Padma Bhushan[7] by the Indian government and ‘Officer of the Legion of Honour’ by the French government.”

Meaningless maybe but lets not smear him as being some backwater railway engineer.

ABC SEGMENT RE PROF OPPENHEIMER
here’s what I did
complained to the ABC via the online email form located on this webpage :http://abc.net.au/contact.

first para

Program: 7.30 report
Program Date: 3 february 2010
ABC Service\Network: ABC Television
ABC Recipient: Audience & Consumer Affairs
Subject: IPCC; GLOBAL WARMING SEGMENT; MICHAEL OPPENHEIMER INTERVIEW
Your Comments:This segment was completely partial and biased contrary to the ABC’s code of conduct and editorial policies; Mr O’Brien interviewed IPCC apologist Michael Oppenheimer for far longer than air time given to sceptics of climate change and mentioned Glaciergate but failed to mention the other numerous scandals concerning the IPCC
I then set out the numerous other scandals
If anyone wants a copy of my complaint; it’s not short but does reference the other scandals which might be helpful to other people and ends by asking How much longer will this disgracefully one-sided coverage of the global warming controversies by its flagship programs be permitted to continue in breach of the ABC charter and policies?

Jo – While getting in to Pittman you may have missed the similar yet baseless smears by another reputable climate scientist… ian Plimer:

“Why does Mr. Monbiot use blog sites, where the bloggers are paid to smear scientists, this is DeSmogBlog which is paid for by the Suzuki Foundation.”

As Desmogblog replies:

Sorry, Plimer, we don’t smear scientists, we simply point out the lack of expertise and fossil fuel industry ties of people like you who are spreading misinformation about the realities of climate change.

DeSmogBlog has never received a single penny from the Suzuki Foundation and Monbiot has never “used” DeSmogBlog.”

“GEORGE MONBIOT: Sure, sure. A classic example of Professor Plimer evading the question. The question was: did you reverse the findings of the reference that you cited. Answer: yes he did. But will he answer that question? The heck he will. And it is, again, I say, the height of bad manners not to answer the very straightforward question which has been put to you, but you can’t answer it because you have made up the facts.

IAN PLIMER: And why does Mr Monbiot use blog sites where the bloggers are paid to smear scientists. This is DeSmogBlog, which is paid for by the Suzuki Foundation, and those people who donate to Greenpeace and the Suzuki Foundation are putting money in to blog sites to smear scientists, those which he uses as a journalist. He’s got no scientific knowledge whatsoever. And as a journalist he uses those to smear people who in a society are coming up with a different view, and my view is based on time, on history.

GEORGE MONBIOT: Again, pure distraction. You are again evading the question, you are evading the issues. It’s just a fascinating exercise in evasion and distraction. Why won’t Professor Plimer ever answer the straightforward questions that are put to him?”

Note that Monbiot dismissed it as a distraction and hardly seemed offended by this so called smear.

I also note that when Plimer was asked a question by Monbiot in this lateline interview, that Monbiot kept interrupting Plimer, as can be read in that transcript, and hence forms the solitary evidence that the Traffic Light Tendency bed wetters use to demean Plimer.

I should add that Plimer seemed not able to answer Monbiot’s questions because Monbiot kept interrupting Plimer, in case I didn’t make it clear enough (This was the Lateline transcription by the way which can be read on the ABC website).

I tend to agree – Plimer might be a great geologist but he’s a lousy TV personality. He should have just quoted his data source and moved on. The point that escaped as a result was that while CO2 levels had increased over the last 10 years, the global temperatures had more or less gone sideways – nothing more than an apian appendage in it! So if CO2 were this bogeyman that we’re told it is, then why was it so hard to pick any difference?

And before you start – don’t try telling me that the time interval was far too short to tell any systematic difference; the global warming advocates seem to accept similar or shorter times (e.g. the 1990′s) when it suits! I seem to recall an Environment Minister making a song and dance about the 2009 BOM report. Mind you the man’s an idiot…

“finds that poorly understood variations in water vapor concentrations in the stratosphere were probably responsible for a substantial wedge of the powerful warming trend in the 1990s and a substantial portion of “the flattening of global average temperatures since 2000″

“IAN PLIMER: I would have to check the references in this on the last 10 years. That I will do. Mr Monbiot is talking about pressing people. In his backyard was the CRU. He fawningly accepted everything they said, and they conned him. He was so easy to con.

GEORGE MONBIOT: Answer the question, Professor Plimer.

IAN PLIMER: The second thing is he talks about is two new …

GEORGE MONBIOT: Answer the question, Professor Plimer.

IAN PLIMER: It is the height of bad manners to interrupt. Please allow me to finish.

GEORGE MONBIOT: You are evading the question again.

IAN PLIMER: He raised a new subject, and that was …

GEORGE MONBIOT: Well please answer the question. It is the height of bad manners to evade the question.

I ran the optic eyeball over a few of the graphs a while back – some of them showed cooler, some warmer, and it all depended on where you started and finished your analysis. But at the end of the day, not much in it. Why not come along to the Monckton sessions and you can ask Ian yourself?

The explanation for the cooling of the 2000′s is very interesting but far too complex for a simple engineer like me. We simple souls tend to find that the explanations involving the least numbers of moving parts are usually the right ones – good old William of Occam had this one sorted out about 900 years ago. It’s fascinating that temperatures also showed a dip in the 1970′s and the 1940′s. If they’re that frequent and predictable, I suppose the IPCC models factor this into their prognostications? As well as the aerosols etc etc. It’s getting to sound like a god-of-the-gaps situation – where gaps keep on opening up the longer this farce goes…

Whatever the case, I think we all agree a few more manners wouldn’t go astray – well done Jo for insisting on a civilised debate.

I’m a bit late in this thread… but to me the rats are jumping from the sinking ship name BS Climate Gate

Michael Mann – not let off the hook yet
Greenpeace UK – are distancing themselves from the IPCC report
WWF – have removed the melting glaciers from their website
India is distancing itself from the UN IPCC and chairman Pachauri.

Then Pres.Obama during his address to the Union? “There are some who do not believe in the climate change science (laughter even he, his VP and the Chairman of the Congress had a laugh with the rest) however correct or not USA must be dedicated to clean energy to keep up with China and Europe (that’s political and economically based I feel) We should develop nuclear, and off shore drilling for gas and oil, and employ people in the manufacture of solar panels…Great applause. [no mention of wind generators or ETS?]

I’ve sent the page to Joanne…Lord Moncktons contention that the draft treaty included a global government is present on the
Australian Green’s site. E5 Global Governance… so it’s not
a myth eh?

The rot is setting in I feel, and about time. Please Lord Monckton and Prof Plimer take this Green’s announcement on their website to substantiate your contention there is a political agenda of the extreme left involved. And the climate
change scam is very real and hasn’t anything to do with global warming and CO2 emissions by industrialised countries.

The Variables make up Greenhouse gases, Water vapor, clouds that make up 95%, that keep the planet warm… without them as Earth is a natural Ice Planet, our atmosphere would plummet 30 degrees and life would not be tenable, any life. Plants would be the first to go. The animals and then us.

So where does this science (?) suggest that bigger concentrations of CO2 (that do naturally disperse in the higher
atmosphere or are reabsorbed naturally) contribute to damaging
climate change. This is been the biggest con out. And PM
Rudd should do a smart apology as being conned like a lot of
politicians or climate change believers have been. With Pres.
Obama coming to Australia soon, maybe he can give PM Rudd some
hints how to back down honorably or risk losing the next election.

I think all Green pollies should be shunted, and all ETS supporters, if they hold any position in Parliament (State or Federal) should rethink their position. They are committing Australians to a tax that will bring us down as a developed nation for no good reason.

Kudos to you Karyn. About time a journalist allowed his/her guest to speak. Well done.

To the person who gave Karyn a thumbs down, have the courage to post your reason why. Karyn did not put forth an opinion, she did not comment on anybody, all she did was alert us to her interview, a subject all of us here have a strong interest in.

The list goes on ,if you don’t know a scam when you see one you deserve to be ripped off ,they are trying to prop up the eu by shifting the debt to all nations who are stupid enough to follow ,tax to change the climate,you must be joking ,its a huge conspiracy and krudd started it here ,its eu agenda 21 and they will take all rights to your land and houses away http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsQfr7wRZswhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiaFr_jEoCE be afraid very afraid,

Great work Karen. Watched ‘guess who is coming to dinner’ the other night and the father of the lead was a newspaper magnate who was respected for his search of truth and equality. We need more like him and you.

“I think all we ever want from our media is a fair hearing of both sides of the argument. Its up to us to then be able to make informed decisions.”

Science is debated, politics is.

That said, there is robust debate about an experiment proposed to test an hypothesis, though in the industry I work in, mineral exploration, that ends up drilling an exploration target, either confirms or rejects the initial hypothesis.

In terms of that experience, I remain a climate sceptic.

(For those interested in facts, I am one of the financiers of Lord and Lady Monckton’s lecture tour in Australia).

Louis – Plimer is asked a question, he waffles and is asked to answer, waffles and is asked to answer, dodges and weaves and is asked to answer. I honestly assumed you posted that transcript to show you agreed with me. You even said QED.

Also – I see you arguing with people you think are idiots all over the web.

Why thank you, sir, and do tell the traffic light tendency bed wetters that it comes from my own personal savings; and no, I am not paid by the oil or coal industries either. I am a professional scientist,defined as one who is paid by the market to do science.

By the way, waffles? is that what your call it? What, have you not progressed from breakfast 101, in which waffles are standard fare in the cooler parts of the Americas for breakfast, accompanied with liberal splashes of maple syrup?

One doesn’t need a degree to understand that CO2 emissions do not contribute to climate change. Climate is what you expect – weather is what you get!

Oppenheimer a climate change apologist,on the ABC report said ‘ CO2 helps to keep the planet warm (as a very small percentage of Greenhouse gases it indeed does, thank God) If we didn’t have Greenhouse gases, our planet would plummet 30 degrees, and we would freeze. Particularly in the Northern Hemisphere.

And cloud cover (or water vapor) stops it from drifting off into
the atmosphere (that it does until water vapour, fog or mists, clouds move off naturally). Oppenheimer was quoting the truth in a way, but avoiding the real truth, if you get my gist.

Give you an example MattB: I live in Armidale Northern NSW on
the Northern Tablelands. I live on Soudan Heights. (3500 absl) Here in winter we are 5 degree Celcius warmer than just a few kms away in the valley. We can grow some plants subject to frost destruction etc., up on the Soudan Heights…they can’t lower down, only a few hundred feet, but in a valley environment near the main creek. Cold (and frost) move down to their lowest level – with me?

A Green ADC councellor tried to prohibit wood burning as a greenhouse gas … When I drove down into the valley from Soudan Hts and CBD being lower in the valley during some atmospheric conditions fogs or mists settled in the valley and beneath them during winter one saw a thin line of brown from fires… once the fog or mist lifted this disappeared. Some of the media showed this white mist/fog collection as pollution it wasn’t! It was 95% water vapor! The Armidale airport the highest in Australia, has been subject to fogs and planes can not land sometimes, been like this for decades.

However if it snows we on Soudan Hts have it settling longer than down in and around the CBD? Heat from urban development
rises and melts the snow flakes before they land.

So the Climate change CO2 mystics are now changing their tune
and I feel the trap has sprung … they have no bait left to
get us believing that AGW will result in dramatic climate change, sea levels rising, glaciers melting and polar bears dieing, etc., because it is based on unscientific jargon and manipulation of the facts and data. Thanks to the Internet, we have been able to research the different points of views, and genuine scientific facts.

Why would Al Gore buy a condo for 4 million dollars American
in an area he stated would be inundated by rising sea levels in the not too distant future…? getting it cheaper, no! He was
bullshitting to make millions out of his “Inconvenient truth”.
Nobel prize etc. But why buy his condo there irrespective?

It makes me absolutely furious that people could fall for this.
I’ve known for over 10 years at least all this climate change
data was incorrect… Now who supports Lord Monckton for having the guts to show us all the nonsense this is contributing and how the global government agenda has caught on to it.

I feel that Al Gore et al, should appear before a world government law court and face charges for willfully spreading lies that could cause an international incident and disruption.
And he and the chairman of IPCC hand back their nobel prize.

Mind you I support Sustainable Living, and a member of this local group..

Matty B: I won’t buy water front homes not because of the fear
of sea inundation because of climate change, because they are subject to erosion and flooding… depends where you live in the world though.

Psst: Has anyone noticed that it’s been 20 comments or more since anyone wrote anything about science or politics? (Can we aim for thicker skins and wake up our sense of humor?!

I have a soft spot for MattB – though I disagree with him often (and have on occasion felt like I was banging my head on a wall), he is a rare commenter. He’s honest and he comes from a different point of view. He’s one of the few who was moderated once, very briefly, and acknowledged my point, agreed to do things differently, and has kept his word (for months). I find it hard to believe that few pass that test, but mattb did, and did it well, and I’m grateful.

I note Mattb was called an idiot, and took it on the chin. I don’t want to get involved in this sort of interchange. If it’s defamatory, or someone is maliciously dominating a thread, that’s different.

I know in official circles and in the media, we skeptics are pounded, insulted, and attacked, but the tables are turned here – Mattb is one against many. Please cut him some slack.

I would prefer if people from either side did not use name-calling, other than affectionately… it ramps up the blood pressure and lowers the tone. But equally, this is comments thread on a hot topic. Let’s not get to precious.

Can we get back to topic? And would anyone object if I just deleted the last 20 comments, so we can start with a cleaner slate?

BTW I have written a couple of excellent answers inspired by Mattb questions (one I’m still holding onto to develop into a post). Sometimes he brings out the best in me, because he makes a point that no skeptic would make. I value that.

Mattb sometimes says what other silent readers might be thinking. That’s useful. If only there were more fans of AGW that were able to join in with a wry comment and few good questions. I wish.

And yes, I’m sorry I haven’t been able to give moderators a training manual, and I haven’t explained myself well. Behind the scenes I’m asking people to help because it’s just not humanely possible for me to do this single handedly and only on donations. I’m looking for ways to make this a team effort.

It would be good to have a few more moderators, so offers from people who can help will be appreciated. But it takes a special ability to be detached, especially when the rules require interpretation.

If you need help in moderation,I am available.I have a WordPress blog too,but barely working on it at this time,since I am busy visiting better ones like this one,to read and learn more.Plus I like my forum better anyway,where I feel more at home.

I have not seen much merit with MattB opinions either,but since he is civil and deserves the opportunity to keep the skeptics on their toes,I hope he sticks around and continue to make contribution here.

If skeptics think calling him names and give him bad vibes is smart,then I would think they should just say nothing at all and be smarter.

I would just SNIP the bad parts out of a comment,and let the rest show up in the thread,if that is acceptable? I mean why allow any of it to EVER show up in the first place and sully your blog?

“So Monbiot does not get distracted by baseless smears – does that not just mean he has a thicker skin than bloggers who get outraged by Pitman?

“Plimer seemed not able to answer Monbiot’s questions because Monbiot kept interrupting Plimer” – you are a funny man Louis. Monbiot only interrupted evasion and waffle.”

I get outraged by Pittman because he is supposed to be an educated man with a science degree.Here is what he stated that caused Jo to make her counterpoints that started the thread with:

“My personal view is that climate scientists are losing the fight with climate sceptics. That the sceptics are so well funded, so well organized, have nothing else to do, they kind of don’t have day jobs, they can put all of their efforts into misinforming and miscommunicating climate science to the public, whereas the climate scientists have day jobs and this isn’t one of them. All of the efforts you do in an IPCC report is done out of hours, voluntarily, for no funding and no pay, whereas the sceptics are being funded to put out full scale misinformation campaigns…”

I own and run a BLOG and a FORUM,all paid out of my own pocket.I do not ask for donations either.It is a small operation,but I make a contribution anyway.I have a growing list of charts and links posted for the purpose of making them available to the public,as part of the educational process.

I deplore people like Al Gore,James Hansen and others who make deliberate smearing statements all the while advancing an ideological propaganda,where they have a significant conflict of interest.

Pittman is coming across as a hypocrite and that is why think he is an ugly man for doing what he is doing.

MattB mentions the “record January temperature” as per the item at WUWT.

Roy Spencer indicates via WUWT that that temperature record is mostly sea-surface temperature.

Before we all panic and rush to the A-Ark, it’s a good idea to look at what the numbers actually mean; and in this case, they are departures from the meanover a previous, longer period. (I hate the term “anomaly” because it has connotations of wrongness.) So the January figure tells us only that it’s warmer than what one would expect if there were no change.

Instead of an actual increase in mean temperature, such a “warming” could simply mean that it’s not cooled as much as the mean. Several factors can explain such a “lack of cooling”; the most likely that springs to mind is increased cloud cover.

One can’t know for sure without reference to the absolute temperatures instead of departures from the mean in conjunction with the insolation data for the relevant periods.

But dont’ trust me. I might just be trying to get a good cabin on the A-Ark.

If Prof.Pitman received one pound excuse me 1 Euro, 1 dollar,
or more for any input they had contributed they have been paid
to put out credited data to substantiate the claim for an ETS
tax. If they have been found to have contributed data that has been shown to be supremely prejudicial and as some have suggested fudged or corrupted – they have taken money under false pretenses in my book.

No wonder they are on the defensive? They have not only got egg
on their faces but also have lead Mr Rudd, his government and Senator Wong ‘up the garden path!’. If I were Mr Rudd he won’t be too happy right now. And nor will the Green’s party with
the E5 Global governance ideology. (Joanne has been sent it but you can Google the Greens Australia site and search for ‘Global governance’.

Other countries are now making it hard for ‘climate scientists’
I would like them to explain that term too. Most people with
12th or any graduate degree in any scientific discipline, including geology, anthropology, archaeology, agriculture, palaeoanthropology, etc., knows what makes the life on this planet respond when climate changes. Even the four seasons
when CO2 emitted by trees and plants will be different in spring, summer to autumn and winter.

And know what keeps this planet from plunging into a cold era
again. How will Green industrialists react when someone says
‘but our planet (in my part of the woods anyway) is getting colder, and solar won’t work too well?

Jo, (192) well said
The following is worth looking at http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/02/what-happens-when-dike-shows-cracks.html
Here is an extract from the speech of the Dutch labour (green) politician in the Dutch parliament 28thJan10.
Science has to be neutral. She has to be a home where there is room for everyone. We must be able to base our politicial opinions – no matter how different – on the same scientific knowledge. The political debate has to be about choices that can be made on the basis of that same knowledge and not degenerate into some quarreling about the question which knowledge is true and which is not. One side, let me call it “my side”, has been too easy on stating that the science does not provide any room for other choices than immediate action. We have defacto removed “the others” from the house. Mr. De Mos and his kindred spirits have left that scientific house rather enthusiastically, and retreated themselves in the blogosphere, and all to easy now restrict themselves into the denying all science. And while we now frenetically try to keep the door closed, they are throwing in the windows with bricks. As far as I am concerned the lesson for us all today should be that I open the door and mr. de Mos drops his bricks. Then it is not only IPCC, but also us, who learn a valuable lesson.
Some comments on the speech in Dutch are here http://climategate.nl/2010/01/29/handreiking-samsom-de-deur-moet-open-voor-de-sceptici/
You do not need much Dutch to understand the following words
Wat Samson werkelijk beweegt om nu een “mea culpa” and
: de ratten verlaten het zinkende schip

Very well put Jo. Thats 7 lies in the first Paragraph. However I wandered over to the transcript here (Sherpas report glaciers going, going, gong) and found a few more.

Put into context: This was a talk about Himalayan Glaciers

Sarah Clarke: You say you’re losing the debate. How worried are you about that?

Andy Pitman: I think it’s potentially catastrophic. If this was academic debate over some trivial issue, so we’re losing an academic debate over some trivial issue. But this isn’t. This is absolutely a fundamental problem for the earth that we desperately needed full-scale international action on a decade ago.

Excuse me academic debates are usually won or lost on scientific evidence, and here what was exposed was there is no scientific evidence that there is a problem with the melting of the Himalayan Glaciers. If there is no problem, then why do we “desperately need full-scale international action”? Read – more huge funds to be thrown at a non-problem.

I do not have time to reference the facts below, maybe some kind soul might do that for me but:

1. Contrary to the IPCC report that the Himalayan Glacier melt is accelerating, it is actually decelerating in some cases, remains the same in other cases, and there is no retreat at all in other cases.

Robyn Williams: Professor Andy Pitman from the University of New South Wales was talking to the ABC’s Sarah Clarke, prompted by that howler in the IPCC report on Himalayan glaciers supposedly being gone by 2035, instead of perhaps by 2300 roughly.

In other words 2035 is wrong, but they will be gone by 2300.

2. The Gangotri Glacier, which is the source of the Ganges river, is 30 kms long. Till 2003 it retreated at 22 m / year, from 2003 to 2005 about 12 m/year, and in the last 2 years there has been no retreat at all. Even assuming, (a very big assumption), a steady retreat of 20 m / year it will take 1,500 years to disappear. (We should be in our next ice-age by then).

The Siachin Glacier, which is 70 kms long, has not retreated at all in the last 50 years.

From that it can be seen that the Himalayan Glaciers will be around well past 2300, if need they will ever disappear.

3. The total hydrological cycle needs to be taken into account. Glacial melt accounts for only a small fraction of the Himalayan fed glaciers. And the available water actually INCREASES when the glacier melt increases and REDUCES when the melt decreases.

Andy Pitman: ..They [the sceptics] are doing at superb job at misinforming and miscommunicating the general public, state and federal governments.

Actually, you Andy Pitman, and others of your ilk, like Mann and Jones etc., are doing doing a superb job at misinforming and miscommunicating the general public, state and federal governments, and you are profiting nicely from that.

There are accusations that the sceptic community receives loads of money from big oil.
Having gone through the blogs, I think the accusation is a bit more sinister.

1. Big oil (and coal) gives money to PR companies such as CATO Institute and Heartland Institute.
2. These PR companies support financially or give publicity access to those that deny man-made climate change.
3. The PR companies funnel money in various forms (such as grants and stipends) to further thinktanks/non-profits so that they replicate the same message and make it appear stronger.
4. There is effort to bring aboard concerned citizens, polarise them and echo the message further.
5. The concerned citizens, at the bottom of the pyramid, are the unpaid foot soldiers, who end up even paying from their own pocket.
6. Instead of a grassroot sceptic community, what we get is an instigated community that end up working for the benefit of big oil/coal.

I see our thumbs down gremlin(s) is/are still with us. But whoever you are, you’ve picked a man who won’t tolerate you forever without telling you off.

So sign in and state your position or remain a coward hiding in the woodwork for fear of discovery. You either stand for something, in which case you should not be afraid to say it, certainly not here; or you are a trouble maker and do quite well to hide lest you be discovered and known for what you are. Which is it?

Mr. Hayes. You have made some interesting charges. As the companies you speak of are public corporations, their records are open. Please post the check numbers and the amounts of these checks from the corporate records.

The reality is that the oil & coal companies have spent money on research but it is nano-fraction of the money spent by the U.N. and other government bodies to find the non-existent smoking gun evidence of Anthropogenic Global Warming. The U.S. alone has spent 79 billion dollars and the best they can come up with is the silly and pathetic computer models by Hansen and the phony graph by Michael Mann.

Your arrogance in branding all speptics as a bunch of energy industry dupes is really quite offensive also. This is not the forum for the “I’m smart, you’re not” folks, unless of course you want to get humiliated beyond a sadists dreams. Do yourself a favor and read the Skeptics Handbook before you post condescending drivel.

Bill Hayes ..Instead of a grassroot sceptic community, what we get is an instigated community that end up working for the benefit of big oil/coal.

Bill Hayes – you got the situation by the tail. The AGW scammers succeeded in duping a large section of naive public because of “loads of money” from governments the UN and big businesses (Bill Gates for example) and big oil, who are on the AGW bandwagon at the moment. Some of course like the greenies are on it because its suits their beliefs / ideology.

The expose of this scam has been left to bloggers, retired scientists, mathematicians, physicists, geologists, who have devoted their time effort and money towards this.

The number of people who are falling for this scam, despite the huge resources being poured into the propaganda for AGW, is falling as fast as the Washington DC snow. That is because most people know a scam when they see one. They are not stupid.

Wow Bill… just wow… You should write fiction with that kind of imagination. As others said, feel free to provide even a smidgen of proof. At least when I post an argument I try to make it intrinsically sound, based on data/references with links and the like. Feel free to do the same. You won’t find a lot of tolerance for baseless arguments (see previous thread regarding Prof Pitman as a clasic example). You will also see Jo’s posts are full of relevant links.

BTW I gain not a schilling from big oil. Never worked for an energy company either, directly or indirectly. In fact, if you know where these big pots of money are for being a skeptic I want to know where to sign up, because it beats doing all this for free.

Talking of “powerful vested interests”, it is interesting to see how much we, the taxpayers, are and have been paying those dedicated public servants at the Met Office to study climate change.

Two entries in the DEFRA science database give some hint. The entry for 1990-2007 puts the sum at £146,275,582, while the next tranche for 2007-2012 stands at £72,536,724.

That is a cool £218,812,306, paid in addition to the basic overhead payments. And on top of that, there are many millions more paid for specific research projects – the total funding declared by DEFRA amounting to £243,620,197.

In the space of two years, the British Council has spent more that £3.5 million of British taxpayers’ money on climate change propaganda – according to information released EU Referendum under the Freedom of Information Act.

It has been spent on recruiting young people in 60 countries to pressurise world leaders to “to take action on climate change”. This included funding groups to attend the December Copenhagen summit in order to take part in demonstrations.

The £3.5 million expenditure has been incurred on two initiatives. The first, and most expensive, costing £2.5 million, is the “International Climate Champions” programme. which “engages young people around the world as communicators who will help to influence and educate their peers and the general public on the urgency of climate change”.

A scientific fact isn’t arrived at by debate but from experimental verification. In this sense climate sensitivity, despite Lindzen and Choi’s paper, and others, pro and contra, shows that no one has yet been able to verify it beyond doubt. So there is indeed debate in the science, but that happens because the experimental results appear equivocal. Apparently Trenberth et al are publishing a paper contrary to Lindzen and Choi, and sure this is pure debate using technically sophisticated arguments. It isn’t science however.

My statement was intended to say that I’m not the right guy to know how much debate actually goes on in science. But I agree with you, debate isn’t science and doesn’t prove anything. In fact I think nothing is proved just by debate.

Nevertheless we humans love to do it. Just get me and a couple of my friends together and watch us go to it with all the energy of a global warming fanatic.

Debating – yes, I understand your point – reminds me of a debate the Sydney Branch of the Aus.I.M.M. held during 1975 – on Uranium mining – it was a students night and we picked two teams for the debate – students from geology, mining, and metallurgy schools. Topic was chosen and coin flipped – the team I was on landed the contra position – ie ban uranium mining etc. I was tail end charlie and given I was one of the first of the field crew evaluating the newly discovered Yeelirrie uranium deposit, meant I was pro-uranium, so having to argue against wasn’t easy. End of the debate and I overheard one crusty old mining engineer mutter that the students opposed to uranium mining were a bit of a worry. Made me smile, little did he realise what we students really thought. Good fun though, so I can appreciate your friendly debates!~

If there is no debate in science then are conclusions simply accepted? Part of the reason for debate is that we are different and see things differently. Its those differences that mean we can see others blindspots. Therefore the more different inquiry into a problem the more likely the resolution is likely to be true. That’s why there is scientific method and slepticism is a hallmark and requirement of science and scientific debate. Without it we would simply be accepting assumptions.

Scientific facts are established by experimental verification by other scientists – and if the theory passes muster, then it is codified into a physical “law” and becomes an engineering problem.

Debate starts when the theory can’t be easily tested experimentally – and often it’s a debate about semantics but generally means the theory is not being studied with the right ideas.

In terms of climate science and as Jo put on an earlier thread, “how to create a crisis graph in 6 simple steps”, the bit that climate science can’t explain in terms of the standard model of the solar system, (nuclear powered radiating sun providing ALL the energy that reaches the earth as radiation) is then attributed to CO2.

In the plasma model the sun and earth, as well as the rest of the solar system, are part of a large interconnected electrical system in which energy is transferred via the enormous Birkeland currents now identified by the THEMIS mission to the sun and from the sun and solar system to the Earth. The auroras are simply evidence of electric currents passing into and out of the Earth system, and these currents are routinely measured in millions of amperes. The auroras glow as a result of those electric currents increasing in power density.

Sunspots are electric discharges on the sun’s photosphere, and when they become minimal or absent, means that the electrical power driving the sun has decreased in power density. And we know historically that this cycle is about 22 years.

Climate science focusses on solar radiation as the sole source of energy – well, solar radiation is a bit like a temperature meter – if it glows hot the higher the temperature and hence energy put into the system, and if gets less bright, then the temperature is dropping.

Where we have gone off the rails in science is assuming that the temperature meter IS the energy source. It isn’t, its the underlying electric currents in the plasma of space that are the sources of the energy that powers the sun and indirectly the earth.

Add electricity to the mix and the “grey area we can’t explain” becomes explicable.

Except that AGW was never about the science in the first place, and that’s why there is so much debate.

Hi,
I followed this blog here following Andrew Pitman. UNSW. Fred Hilmer. Fairfax. Westfield. Lowy Institute.
Only somebody who has lived in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs would appreciate how social connections are so much more valued than intellectual rigour or personal qualities.
Malcolm Turnbull. Point Piper. Wentworth.
Connect the dots.

Only somebody who has lived in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs would appreciate how social connections are so much more valued than intellectual rigour or personal qualities.

Philip, one can see this same syndrome in the Hollywood elite, not to mention politics. When you can be safely detached from reality that mindset is all too easy to fall into and no doubt beneficial. People need to belong, whether it’s a gang of thugs in Los Angeles or a social network in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. It seems to be built in.

Thankyou Bill, I was going to mention ad hominem attacks and post several examples but you have done the work for me. The articles you linked are perfect examples of the non-scientific tactics used by the AGW KoolAid Club to vilify and defame any and all who refuse to march into the ovens of human devolution. Notice in the article on M&M there was not even one attempt to refute the findings, simply poorly done attacks and attempts to smear their character. Also, please Bill, grow up and stop using the term denial. No one is denying that the climate is changing, that would be refuting reality, pointless and silly. Of course the climate is changing, otherwise it would be broken- lol! What is being debated is the cause of climate change and if in fact anything can or should be attempted to influence it.

I would be ashamed to support my statements with what you just posted. Everything in all three references is just opinion without supporting evidence of any kind.

Just for starters, McIntyre’s refutation of the hockey stick has withstood all challenges and has been independently duplicated by others. As Joanne has so often said, what matters is whether the guy got it right or not. His lack of credentials acceptable to you is not even a side issue. It’s irrelevant.

Let me frame it a little better for our purposes and your understanding Bill. Seeing as how you used the offensive holocaust reference I’ll put in those terms… If Adolph Hitler says it is 2:45pm and after checking, it is indeed 2:45pm then he is correct regardless of how reprehensible a human being. But if Al Gore says the polar bears are dying, the storms are increasing, the glaciers are melting, the oceans are rising, the deserts are getting larger, and C02 produced by humans is the cause, if after checking, he is found lacking of empirical evidence to support his claims, then despite his title of “formerly known as the next President of the United States”, he is full of s—. Clear enough?

Who Cares? I thought I had made a comment on Joanne’s ‘blogs’
regarding the scams going on with regards investing in Carbon
Trading Credits investments. An article in the Toronto Sun in
January,(written by Goldstein) suggested these schemes were being investigated in Europe and some were out and out scams.

The India Times also ran an article last year I think that suggested that the share prices had dropped from $7 to $1. No wonder they want to keep the AGW belief alive. I wonder if the Australian government has also invested also? And if the BBC
pension fund is also at risk, no wonder the debunked UN IPCC and
UEA reports are giving them some worries. No Carbon Credit
taxes, no dividends, eh?

According to WWF’s latest financial report, 2008 was not quite such a good year for them. They’ve switched their accounting to Euros, rather than dollars, and say that in 2007, they took €508,137,000, and in 2008, they took €447,251,000. Poor WWF. Still, we make that to be roughly $584,000,000 – over half a billion dollars, bringing their total income since 2003 to just over $3.1 billion, not including 2009.

Of interest to some of our readers is the fact that WWF took €73,938,000 ($104,320,000) in 2007 and €76,930,000 ($108,856,000) in 2008 from ‘Governments and Aid Agencies’.

Us skeptics must be making heaps more. Hey!! Wheres my share, I’m a skeptic.

Who Cares? I like your posts. The UNIPCC draft treaty supported the ideology of a Global Government to manage CC taxes. The Global Government ideology is on the Greens (Australia) site E5 Global Governance. The founder of Greenpeace stated in “The Great Global Warming Swindle” he resigned as he felt the organisation was going political.

I’ve stopped donating to Greenpeace as a result.

The WWF sent a survey to me (in Australia – Anyone get it also)
late last year.

Question one: Did [I] know that 50% of Australian mammals had become extinct because of global warming. I replied. We have
no native mammals although marsupials and monotremes could be described as archaic mammals, like Homo Erectus can be described as an archaic homo sapien. The dingo did not evolve in Australia.

Another question: Do you believe Australia and developed nations
should pay undeveloped nations for their part in global warming.
My answer – No no way. Offer them technological help though.

I posted it – must see if their questionnaire is on the internet.

I donate to IFAW but stopped membership to the RSPCA. (Over the Ruth Downey affair). I queried IFAW at one time as their UK branch had sued Clarissa Dickson Wright (one of the Fat Ladies and ardent supporter of Country Alliance) for attending a greyhound coursing event. Legal as it was but attended by ‘antis’ – long story but they pleaded guilty but let off without
costs etc.

So I am now more conscious of the hidden agendas in what could
be described (PETA for one!) as some organisations getting on the bandwagon politically to benefit a small minority of people
and AGW’s propoganda. (Can’t spell today LOL).

These carbon tax investments worry me. I know there was a scheme for investment in Ecuador rain forests. And Prince Charles was encouraging this too.

I was absolutely astounded whilst reading Booker’s “The Real Global Warming Disaster” to learn that Friends of The Earth is paid £450,000 a year, half their income, from the EU. So EU politicians are paying a political lobby group to promote an AGW agenda. That beggars belief

And in the link given on my post @, 217 Booker reveals that UK tax payers have been paying green activists to attend climate seminars

yeah i saw that mate. This whole AGW thing has been like a 100 ton train hurtling at top speed until it hit the climategate bump. Now the wagons are derailing one at a time. ( wow I like my own analogy lol)

I guess from a financial point of view, they (UN EU) believe it’s money well invested, (it’s not their money afterall) but will reap great rewards via forced higher taxation on all developed world citicens. They’ll pass some of it to the poorer nations to get their support in the UN (nearly worked) and line their pockets with the rest.

Baa Humbug: Another jewel passes via your words. I love the
analogy and will give you credit for in letters to the Press, answering a letter to my MPs re Climate Change Scam. Actually
my Federal MP has invited me to comment. He too is skeptical I believe and is concerned agroforestry and growing bio fuels displace land for growing food.

And Malcolm ‘Turncoats’ speech is disgraceful, he still believes
in the myths of global warming, rising sea levels etc. And sees
the oppositions side as more expensive than the governments.
Most probably invested already in carbon trading etc. I noticed very few of the opposition (his party!) were present when he
made it. I fear the death knell sounding for MT.

Re: Media Watch ABC last night “Lord of the Airways” referring
to Lord Monckton… what a laugh. Lord Monckton referred to
Patchauri and Sir John Houghton were under investigation as Trustees of TERI Europe… well this might be so however, John
Houghton reply was “I am not nor have ever been a trustee TERI Europe!”

Gosh someone tell him, I Googled the Trustees of TERI Europe and there he is on top of the list! These Technophobes have no idea what the internet can do. He was also a co recipient of the 2007 Nobel Prize with Al Gore and UN IPCC as preparing the IPCC report. Chief of the Met Office in London, now resigned I believe. Well Done Lord M… keep them coming.

Baa Humbug, as promised I have written a long letter to my local
MP’s and quoted you, possibly embellished a little, and I have sent it to Joanne to pass on to you.

News. Malcolm Turnbull former leader of the Opposition, stood up in Parliament and to a sparse audience of his political peers
announced he was crossing the floor to support the ALP governments ETS taxation bill. Hearsay – but from allegedly close informants of Malcolm Turnbull, he has no choice he has invested millions in Carbon Credits Trading shares. Bad luck it seems they are plummeting – Malcolm keep walking right out of Parliament House please. He was associated with the H I H collapse. He bought the shares for about 24 million and then sold them to investors for 10 times that amount… subsequently the H I H collapsed.

He didn’t do anything wrong but now the bee has come to sting his arse perhaps?

Well Baa Humbug, you have been mentioned in dispatches to pollies and editors and on other blogs, I will explain I have embellished your previous quote however credited it to you. I have worked for pollies in my time. Still do as a volunteer during electorate campaigns.

Malcolm is a business man, not an experienced politician. I don’t like the way he attained his seat in Wentworth, my opinion of course. I think he is absolutely discredited by his speech in parliament yesterday … I wish it can be confirmed he has invested millions personally in Carbon Trading credits as that means his speech was motivated by personal financial interest not political honesty and credibility. I personally if you wish to get a job with him, beyond as a political campaigner or volunteer, pick someone else. I’ve worked for many politicians, one as a political officer and that person Ian Sinclair was a straight honest person battling for his electorate constituents rights.

Tony Windsor and Hon Richard Torbay are in the same category.
And I am sure there are many more who battle for their constituents the same way as they do. The bottom line, as both the above have told me personally, we represent our constituents
if they are saying ‘Do this or do that’ we function on it. As independents they do not adher to party lines of course.

Do Malcolm Turnbull’s constituents agree with him… I doubt it?
After all he is by saying what he did, echoing the consensus of
the electorate he represents. Maybe the majority of his constituents have invested in Carbon Credits Trading and risk losing some of their investments? Fair enough, but not good enough!

I would if I were you reconsider any application to work for him. That’s up to you though? I don’t think you would enjoy
the experience. Mind you for 50 grand a year or more, some would sell their soul?

Baa Humbug et al. I’m not sure how to do this properly but there is an article dated 28th October 2009, Titled ‘Goldman Sachs’ Turnbull dances to British carbon trading tune .’ By the Citizen’s Electoral Council. They are a Federally Registered Political Party. Home page: http://www.cecaust.com.au

I came across it by Googling … Turnbulls Investments?

Now no wonder he spat the dummy in parliament. Read the article
it is mind boggling.

Also I received a media note from ‘Barnaby Joyce’ to say that
this government is probably billions in debt through carbon credits offered to solar panel rebates (now devalued) and of course this scheme regarding house insulation that four people
have already died via electrocution or heat exhaustion.

I knew a person who worked for a legitimate installer, doing
this to housing commission homes I believe. And they fitted
one to a blokes house, and he said he owned it, and they couldn’t take it out again could they? Another stuff up. Peter Garrett is a nice man, good humanitarian, but no politician like Malcolm Turnbull in my opinion. And an ex Green
supporter.

In 1994 they made a movie called ‘The Madness of King George.’ A true story about the eccentric and erratic behaviour of King George the 3rd of England, who exhibited increasing strange and eccentric behaviour, ignoring all logic and common sense to do as he wished.
In the near future they will no doubt be making another one based on the same behaviour of Kevin Rudd, called ‘The Madness of King Rudd.’
In spite of all the screaming facts from all corners of the globe that now has become apparent about renewable energy and global warming Kevin Rudd still refuses to listen or look at the truth and still declares that 20% of our power generation will be renewable energy.
——- IT IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO DO THAT.
And if it was possible (and I repeat it is not) the influence from the unreliable wind or solar generators would cause instability in the power grid system as they con-tinually change without any warning.
Also there would have to be a spinning reserve in the grid system in excess of 20%. plus normal spinning reserve to cover the largest unit ( in N.S.W. 660MWs) plus spare.
That reserve would be covered by thermal power station units backed off sufficiently in load to immediately pick up if required. This affects their generation efficiency as they are at maximum efficiency at full load. Thus increasing generation cost.
And no you cannot just ‘turn them on and off’ like light switches. To bring a coal fired thermal unit to at least mid load or better operating level can take up to twelve hours or more from a cold start.
Hot starts are quicker but are not good for the unit on a continuous basis. Genera-tors are designed to stay on line and operating continuously and they normally do that for months on end. Usually more than a year requiring only normal service shutdowns.
The power grid system in any country is a very closely controlled, finely tuned and highly sensitive network that must maintain the system voltage and frequency within very fine limits.
To subject it to major (i.e.20%) unregulated continual variations in power input can create control problems and instability.
More gas turbine are being installed but these only have a relatively small output and are used for peak loads, not load control.

I read an article recently by a Melbourne university lecturer where he stated that coal fired thermal power generation units were slow and could not respond to load changes.
It is this type of erroneous completely wrong statements from someone who should know better, that deliberately mislead the community.
Coal fired thermal power generators can respond rapidly to system load changes and can cover the instant loss of the largest unit (660 megawatts) without instability being created in the system. It is this type of response that is required to compen-sate for the erratic output from wind and solar generators if they were to have a 20% input to the grid.
One wonders if Kevin Rudd has an ulterior motive for doing his best to destroy the power industry. Surely no one can be that blind and stupid to not see the glaring truth about the so called renewable energy farce.
It is not about what political persuasion or beliefs you have. It is about facts and the truth. Certainly anything cleaner or cheaper is welcomed but only IF it IS cheaper, NOT because the greenies or wind generator and solar array manufacturers say so.
The cost to install, operate and maintain them is very high. Wind generators have killed hundreds of thousands of birds with bird strikes throughout the world.

Here are some of those “screaming facts.’
In the early 1980s California was seduced by renewable energy and proceeded to offer subsidies to anyone wanting to erect a wind generator. This subsidy ceased in the late 1990s as they ran out of money due to bankruptcy.
By 2008 they had over 18000 wind generators scattered across California——————————-14000 of them no longer operate, some were cannibalised to keep the other running.
California power cost has now doubled. Their thermal power generation has in-creased continually to compensated for this disaster and the input from the wind generators, after 30 years of development,produces only 2.3% of California’s elec-tricity. An extremely small percentage and erratic output.
There is also over 15000 birds killed per year by bird strikes from wind generators.

Spain also embraced renewable energy with wind generators and solar array farms. A recent detailed analysis found that for every job created by state-funded support of renewables, particularly wind energy, 2.2 jobs were lost. Each wind in-dustry job created cost almost $2-million in subsidies.
They now have an unemployment rate of 19%. The cost of power has gone up 100% and they are forced to import power from other countries.
Germany has over 7000 wind generators with over 2500 wind generator failures last year alone. The German experience is no different. Der Spiegel reports that “Germany’s CO2 emissions haven’t been reduced by even a single gram,” and ad-ditional coal- and gas-fired
plants have been constructed to ensure reliable supply.
Sweden has 5000 wind generators and 2000 wind generator failures.
During the cold weather in Europe last December a large number of wind genera-tors froze up and did not work at all. When they finally did they only generated 4% of their capacity.
Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide
emissions have risen by 36% in 2006 alone and continues to rise.. Its electricity generation costs are the highest in Europe.
Niels Gram of the Danish Federation of Industries says, “Windmills are a mistake and economically make no sense.”
Aase Madsen , the Chair of Energy Policy in the Danish Parliament, calls it “a terri-bly expensive disaster.”

Wind generators only generate an average of 30% of their capacity averaged over a month and are completely inconsistent, varying in output between zero and 70% and rarely reaching their maximum capacity.
For wind generators to provide 20% renewable energy in Australia there would have to be over 7000 of them assuming they were 5MW units with the usual generation capability of 30%.
Every Megawatt they generate would have to be backed up by a spinning reserve in the power grid system ready to compensate for their inconsistency. Which neutralises any advantage they may offer.
Wind generators are ideal for boats or isolated areas where they can charge a bank of wet cell batteries providing a continuous power supply. But are of great expense and are of no advantage to the power grid system.

Solar power Generation is in two forms.
Solar thermal generation is where the reflectors are concentrated on a central re-ceiver which then heats a liquid such as sodium, which in turn heats the water to generate steam that drives a turbine coupled to a generator.
The problem is the heat is only available in strong sunlight and increases through-out the day and then falls off to nothing in the evening when there is insufficient sunlight to heat and drive the turbine. It then stops generating. This inactivity occurs for 14hrs of the day and the continual heating and cooling is not good for steam turbine operation.
These units, even though they cover a large area, only generate small amounts of power and add little to power demands.

Solar Electric Generation through solar array farms is more common where the panels generate power from sunlight stimulation. They are very expensive per kilo-watt generated to install and require high maintenance to keep them clean and are susceptible to damage from storms and falling objects.

The total peak power generated in Australia is approximately 50,000MWs.
The World’s largest (currently) operating solar power generation plant is the Olme-dilla Photovoltaic Park in Spain, and this needs an area of 250 hectares to generate 60MWs in bright sunlight. So let’s put this into perspective.
There are 100 hectares to the square kilometer, and using Olmedilla as a guide, one square kilometer will generate 24MWs.
Theoretically therefore, at maximum generation on a bright sunny day the genera-tion of 10,000MWs to power 20% of Australia’s needs would require a solar array covering an area of 420 square kilometers – a massive area.
However because such a plant would only generate at approximately 20%-30% of its capacity measured over a year, the full size area needed would have to be five times larger, i.e. 2100 square kilometers.
Then there is a minor (?) problem: these plants do not generate at night!!

So, here are some hard facts about solar generation:
1. Supply is more consistent in continually sunny areas e.g. Saudi Arabia, Queen-sland, Africa, etc., therefore solar generation would not be very effective in areas such as U.K., Europe, Russia, etc. where it is far more overcast. Solar power re-quires bright sunlight for maximum performance. The output can vary dependent on how overcast it is.
2. Solar generation is only possible during daylight hours where there is sufficient sunlight, approximately eight to ten hours per day; therefore it does not generate anything for between 14 and 16 hours per day.
3. Output cannot be controlled except for changing angles of those arrays fitted with moving solar panels.
4. The supply is unreliable, although more consistent than wind generation which is notoriously unreliable and thermal, nuclear, or hydro power (if available) is required to carry sufficient reserve in the grid system to compensate for any changes in solar plant output due to any changes in sunlight during the day.
5. It is very expensive per kilowatt to install, and expensive per kilowatt to operate and maintain. The solar panel receivers have to be continuously kept clean of bird droppings, dust, and rubbish; and they can be damaged in severe weather (for ex-ample in the recent severe hailstorm in Melbourne).

As a power ‘add on’, solar ‘farms’ are useful but could never play anything more than a small part of the grid system because of their inflexible and unreliable nature. The same applies even more so to wind generators.

A note about solar power generation for your home:
The solar program subsidised by the federal government has an output of 1 to 1.5 kilowatts per hour. Provided the sun shines brightly and there is no cloud cover.
The power usage of the average Australian family (i.e. 2 adults + 2 children) is ap-proximately 3 to 4 kilowatts per hour during the day and the additional power re-quired would be drawn from the grid system
Even at night while you are asleep some 0.8 to 1.5 kilowatts per hour is still required to keep things going, such as a refrigerator If you start to run things such as air-conditioning then inevitably your power demand must increase and all power is drawn from the power grid.
The cost of a 1.7kW system is somewhere between $7,000 & $8,000 after allowing for the present Australian Government subsidy. The cost before the subsidy is somewhere between $13,000 & $14,000.
The good news is that a far more efficient solar photovoltaic panels has been in-vented in Israel, and this is reported to be 400% more efficient than present panels. However these are still being tested and developed and not yet ready for general use.

Hydro Electric is the perfect Power Generation but we are using all available water resources and there is no more available to increase its capacity.
Hydro generation is 4.6% of total generation and can only run when there is suffi-cient water from spring snow melt and rain water.

Geothermal is good if you are in New Zealand but there is none in Australia except for the ‘Hot Rocks’ experiments which so far has only met with failure.

Tidal and wave Generation is being developed but would only have a very minor possible power generation capability for the foreseeable future. In the distant future (50 years) I believe we may develop it substantially.
Nuclear Power generation is proving throughout the world to be the ideal power generation system. Especially with the new revolutionary 4th generation Liquid fluoride Thorium Reactor systems that solves all the problems associated with nuclear power. LFTRs consume 100% of the thorium fed to them and can be started with spent fuel rods or old nuclear warheads.
LFTRs will inevitably be used as janitors cleaning up old nuclear waste.
A very exciting new concept for power generation.

In the past three years the Rudd government has squandered billions of dollars on;
A. Clean coal technology. A complete failure.
B. Hot rocks programmes, Still struggling to get any form of result.
C. Power stations with CO2 deep storage. Massive cost for a teaspoon of power.
D. Renewable energy projects. Could never achieve a viable usage or cost.
E. Home Insulation programmes. A total waste of money and a disaster.
F. Solar Power on homes. Will have negligible effect on power generation.

All have been either a failure or worse a disaster as in the insulation program.

AND FOR WHY?
Oh yes that’s right !!! To reduce our ‘carbon footprint’. What a ridiculous name. One imagines a big black boot covered in graphite leaving a mess on the carpet. When they actually mean carbon dioxide emissions.
Carbon Dioxide the gas essential to all life and they call it a pollutant.

SO HOW DOES ALL THE ABOVE REDUCE CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS.
Ah yes! By reducing the amount of electrical power from the thermal power stations that generate over 94% of our energy. Therefore reducing the CO2 coming out of the stacks.
Except for one minor point!!!!!!
In 2008-2009 Australia’s power stations produced approximately 276 billion kilowatt hours (TWh) of electricity*, 71.5% more than the 1990 level and continue to grow at 4% pa.
This growth in production is normal and has not even dropped in the slightest due to the above programmes.
In other words all the money spent by the federal and state governments is a TO-TAL squandering of our money for ZERO reduction in CO2 emissions.
The power returned to the grid system from domestic solar panels would be an irri-tating and a very expensive teaspoon full in a 200 litre drum.
The federal and state governments have spent many billions of dollars of ours and our children’s economic future chasing butterflies.

One final point; NOT ONE of the doomsday predictions from as far back as 1979 has eventuated or proven to be true.
Global warming will be forever in our history as the biggest scam EVER perpetrated on mankind putting billions of dollars in the pockets of those that have promoted the scam and those ‘scientists’ that have been highly paid to come up with ‘positive’ results.
( Remember the computer 2000 millennium bug.)

The eruption of the volcano in Iceland that is emitting millions of tons of sulphur dioxide, ash and carbon dioxide daily make man’s efforts extremely puny and ridi-culous.

The madness of the federal and state governments in this horrific waste of money must be stopped before they bankrupt the country.